Here’s how Alitalia and Ita collide
Ita is waiting for the cancellation of flights by Alitalia: the extraordinary commissioners have not yet authorized the cancellation of flights. The facts analyzed by the economist Ugo Arrigo
Double speed between Ita and Alitalia: after the green light of Enac which issued the certifications to Ita last August 18 – in just 4 weeks from the company's request – the carrier has been ready for days to insert its flights into the sales systems .
However, Ita is waiting for the cancellation of flights by Alitalia which, according to sources close to the dossier, is traveling at a different speed.,Wrote the agency La Presse .
For environments close to Alitalia, the green light from Brussels with a comfort letter sent in mid-July would not be enough.
In addition, the carrier, despite the fact that Mise has given an informal green light to cancellations several times, insists on receiving an official communication from the Ministry, more complicated to receive in these weeks of August.
The Extraordinary Commissioners of Alitalia, despite the go-ahead, including that of Iata, have not yet authorized the cancellation of flights, an indispensable condition to allow Ita to start sales and continue its path towards the start of operations on 15 October.
A scenario that the transport economist, Ugo Arrival, had outlined in recent days, as remarked by Start Magazine and which today was underlined by the same economist via Twitter:
ITA has not yet put up for sale the bookings for the flights it is expected to make starting October 15. Alitalia, on the other hand, continues to collect bookings beyond that date, despite having been told that flights should cease on October 14. Who's right?
ITA can theoretically put the flights on sale, having obtained both the Coa and the aircraft operator license, but can do so only after Alitalia stops. But in order to quit, Alitalia needs those who have the authority to do so formally order it.
In fact, at the time of the extraordinary administration in 2017, Alitalia received, from the vigilant ministry, the MISE, together with the necessary money, the mandate to guarantee operational continuity until the sale of the assets.
Therefore, when the private negotiation with ITA for the sale of the aviation branch is concluded , it is clear that the agreement must also include the date on which Alitalia stops flying and the following one on which ITA begins.
At the moment, however, the private negotiation has not only not ended but probably hasn't even started. Consequently, the double date cannot arise in the short term from the agreement between the parties.
For now, Alitalia's flight end date is only written in the MEF press release of 15 July which, obviously, has no prescriptive value. And actually not even descriptive.
If you do not want to wait for the agreement, it is clear that the date of termination of Alitalia flights must be in a provision of the Authority supervising the procedure and certainly cannot be defined by the autonomous will of the commissioners.
However, even if the flight end date for the old Alitalia were fixed with certainty, could ITA put on sale flights for which it does not yet have the technical capacity to make them, currently having only two aircraft and their crews?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/ecco-come-alitalia-e-ita-entrano-in-collisione/ on Fri, 20 Aug 2021 14:45:05 +0000.