The 1,322 employees of the Air Italy company, of which 600 based in Sardinia, received the communication of the interruption of the relationship. Facts, numbers, comments and analysis

For the 1,322 employees of Air Italy, the airline in liquidation, there is immediate dismissal. To sanction the end of a path that lasted almost four years (between work and social safety nets) the letters, sent in advance via email, and dated 2 January. No notice but the payment of the substitute indemnity, underlined Il Sole 24 Ore . Here are all the details.

WHAT HAS AIR ITALY DECIDED

The history of Air Italy ends on January 2, 2022 with a letter announcing the collective dismissal of 1,322 pilots, flight attendants and ground crew. It is signed by Enrico Laghi and Franco Maurizio Lagro, the liquidators of the former Meridiana stopped in February 2020 after the failed relaunch of the Aga Khan and Qatar Airways.

THE COMMENT OF INTRIERI, EXPERT IN THE SECTOR

“It is clear that Karim Aga Khan's decision to voluntarily liquidate the company cannot fail to be understood, both from an industrial and a human point of view. And the statements of some politicians who in recent days hypocritically comment on the decision of the shareholders' meeting appear to be very out of place, pretending not to be aware of the state of the art. The state of the art was well known among professionals ”, wrote the expert manager of the sector, Gaetano Intrieri, on Startmag some time ago.

THE LETTER FROM AIR ITALY

"We inform you of your dismissal with immediate effect," reads the few lines sent yesterday by e-mail 48 hours after the expiry of the layoff. The company therefore did not want to extend the social safety nets.

THE OUTCOME

An outcome now defined on 29 December when the company did not appear at the last meeting between the parties (government, regions, unions) at the decision of the shareholders.

WHAT THE UNIONS SAY

A gesture that the Sardinia Region called an "institutional rudeness" and yesterday spoke of a "slap". "The dismissal letters left with total indifference", denounce Filt Cgil, Fit Cisl, Uiltrasporti and Ugl Transport Aereo who ask for "immediate government intervention to block the procedure".

THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYEES

The dismissed employees – recall the unions – will be able to access the Naspi (New social insurance for employment) with a more favorable regime since the new service provides for a reduction in the amount no longer from the fourth month, but from the sixth and for the over 50 from the eighth month.

I'll explain the crash of Air Italy. Intrieri's analysis:

That of Air Italy was a default announced for some time, it was clear from the beginning to those who know the dynamics of air transport that the entry of Qatar Airways could not presuppose anything good for the future of the company dear to Prince Karin Aga Khan.

It is also true, however, that in this country where numbers are of no interest to anyone, and where airlines have historically accumulated losses upon losses, the arrival of petrodollars could only be hailed as a liberation were those of the Emir of Abu Dhabi or those of the Emir of Doha did not matter, the important thing was to politically sell the alleged industrial successes and the great synergies with a prosperous future.

Too bad that the Arabs are well aware of the managerial limits of their company bosses and equally aware that with Italian politics and lobbying they would have lost so much money, they have in fact turned the story of the series upside down: they think they can fool us and instead we will deceive them. ! No sooner said than done!

In many of my writings I have analyzed and documented Etihad's speculation against Alitalia , today many of those analyzes have become real indictments thanks to the extraordinary work of the investigators who are in charge of the investigation into the bankruptcy of Alitalia well the Qataris they acted in an almost identical way with the small company of Prince Ishmaelite, making it close after more than 50 years of history and sacrifices of His Highness Karim Aga Khan to whom it is necessary to recognize an extraordinary willingness to cover the enormous losses of the last twenty years of Meridiana which later became Air Italy. Let's face it clearly, if there had not been a shareholder of such economic availability and above all such patience in annually covering losses beyond any reasonable limit, Meridiana would have ended up in bankruptcy like all the other Italian Neos airlines excluded.

The prince had patiently covered really significant losses over the years , yet in this case, the saying is that the worst never ends, and the worst materializes in a handsome Canadian character of Bulgarian origin, Rossen Dimitrov, who thanks to the meeting with Al Baker, from flight attendant he becomes the manager of Qatar Airways sent to Air Italy to manage the glorious former Sardinian airline.

In reality, it is immediately understood that Air Italy's Qatar does not give a damn about this choice. But that's not all, the phantasmagorical Qatari strategists decide to dismantle the history of Alisarda / Meridiana not only by reuniting it with the subsidiary Air Italy and naming the airline with the latter's name, but in fact by dismantling the Olbia office and almost eliminating Meridiana Maintenance Meridiana's historic aerial maintenance workshop.

At that time I was a member of the technical mission structure at the Ministry of Transport and at the request of the Minister, I took care of understanding what was happening. I summoned to Enac the company that was represented at that time by the then president Marco Rigotti and at least managed to curb the Qatari impetuosity in wanting to send almost all the Sardinian workers home at all costs. A little later I left the Ministry, but this did not prevent me from understanding the economic and financial situation of the company and informing ENAC of what I had been able to analyze, despite Rigotti trying to report that the losses were foreseen in the budget and that they were limited to about sixty millions of euros. Unfortunately, my impressions based on the analysis of the few data were correct, to the point that the surveillance team of the operating licenses in March 2019 warned Air Italy to fulfill the coverage of the large losses under penalty of suspension of the license after having ascertained that what I had assumed it was true, that is, that the losses were greater than 180 million euros.

But that's not all, since in 2019, taking advantage of the problems that occurred with the Boeing 737 MAX after the two known incidents and considering that Air Italy following these events had to ground the three units it had in its fleet, Qatar and the his manager came up with a wonderful idea: to replace the three aircraft through the de facto establishment of the first ACMI airline in the history of aviation. ACMI is the acronym used to define the rental of an aircraft, including crew and maintenance assistance, so that in a now infamous policy increasingly aimed at humiliating the employees of the airline, Italian crews were kept at home after having sent home so many certified aeronautical mechanics at the Olbia headquarters, to take planes with Bulgarian crews and mechanics probably makes me think to pay homage to the origins of the handsome Qatari manager. The idea proves to be really excellent and spot on in terms of profitability, to the point that finally in 2019 the wall of 200 million losses is shattered. With a fleet now reduced to 7 airplanes and some aircraft taken with the ACMI formula, it is finally possible to reach the coveted record of losing over 200 million euros in a single year.

An unprecedented social butchery, destruction of managerial skills, destruction of maintenance know-how, destruction of what was the historical commercial catchment area or Sardinia to succeed in the unique and unattainable enterprise in the history of commercial aviation of losing 200 million in one year with a fleet of 7 aircraft. It is necessary here to acknowledge that not even the best strategists who have succeeded one another in Alitalia over the years have managed to go that far. Chapeau!

But how did they lose all this money? And above all the Qatari philanthropist partner how much money has he lost?

Exactly as in the case of Etihad with Alitalia, the money that came out of the door returned through the window in many ways, aeronautical components, various services that Air Italy was in fact forced to buy from Qatar at prices even 3 times higher than the market, up to to get to the leasing of long-haul aircraft, or the 5 vaunted Airbus A330s. Aircraft with an average life of about 15 years that Qatar has leased to Air Italy at an average monthly rate of $ 500,000 compared to a market price of $ 185,000. Qatar actually took home about 40 million dollars in two years with a sensational dumping on long-haul aircraft granted to Air Italy and to which must be added a further speculation on the 3 Boeing 737 MAXs of which Air Italy had to continue to pay the lease installment to Qatar even after the aeronautical provisions had prohibited its operation. Incredible but true! And at this point I wonder what Rigotti and the other members of the Board of Air Italy appointed by the Aga Khan holding to represent him on the board of directors were doing?

Here then is that "pity" the foreigner as they are trying to do for Alitalia as well, in aviation it does not work, one thing is to ally with airlines from other countries, a very different thing is to be bought by foreign airlines who legitimately then come to Italy to speculate at the expense of airline workers and Italian taxpayers

It is clear that at the state of what has been described up to now, Karim Aga Khan's decision to put the company into voluntary liquidation cannot fail to be understood, both from an industrial and a human point of view. And the statements of some politicians who in recent days hypocritically comment on the decision of the shareholders' meeting appear to be very out of place, pretending not to be aware of the state of the art. The state of the art was well known among the insiders.

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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/perche-air-italy-chiude/ on Tue, 04 Jan 2022 07:44:23 +0000.