There is a passage from the interview with the director of Ita, Alfredo Altavilla, published today in the Sole 24 Ore, which deserves attention: “The new company must be considered a start-up” (and not a continuation in another form of Alitalia) . This comforts us because Alitalia has been for many, too many years a black hole in which public money ended up: almost 13 billion thrown away, which did not help to avoid a real disaster, an abyss of endless losses.
Altavilla has what it takes to make us forget the past, after having won adequate managerial stars on the field as an essential component of the team that Sergio Marchionne surrounded himself, engaged in the relaunch of FCA. The agreement signed on 2 December with most of the unions is a fundamental step in the attempt to get Ita off the ground and was not at all obvious. This is why it should be greeted with satisfaction. In the end, reasonableness prevailed, avoiding a conflict that would have crippled the nascent company.
Of course, the recent twists and turns of the pandemic do not help but, compared to the past, the turning point is evident. It is equally certain that the time available to turn the page definitively is running out. “We have to run,” Altavilla repeats to the main collaborators. On the horizon, inevitable, will be a second decisive choice: the alliance that will allow Ita to reduce the handicap of the size, insufficient to withstand international competition because the company born from the ashes of Alitalia is too small to do it alone. We will see how it ends. The negotiations took off on several fronts. And it is not certain that the landing will be in France or Germany.