A bit over two years ago, Qatar Airways announced their intentions to invest in Meridiana, Italy's second largest airline (which isn't saying a whole lot). The airline has a fleet of just 16 planes, consisting of 737s, 767s, and MD-80s. It's an outdated fleet, to put it mildly. It took quite a while for Qatar…
Continue reading: Meridiana To Become Italy’s “Real” National Carrier, According To Qatar Airways
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
What are the chances Meridiana will be part of OW down the road? Especially with the loss of Air Berlin...
Please bet this at 50/50 scale because some of Mr. Al Baker's comments were very questionable.
Where's all this capital coming from? Owning a stake in such a small airline doesn't seem all that profitable and it's not like Qatar's (the country and the airline...?) current situation is helping things out at all from a financial perspective. That's a lot of new planes and new people to come from seemingly nowhere and in a VERY short period of time.
On the other hand, it would be awesome to see Alitalia either emerge as a much better airline (so highly improbable that it hurts to think about it) or to actually see Meridiana fill the long-haul void to/from Italy left by Alitalia.
I have no reason to doubt good intentions from everyone, including Al baker. As an Italian I do pray they will succeed. But again as an Italian I also remember that no airline has ever survived in Italy except for Alitalia because of government funds and only because of that. Airline cant easily survive in Italy. That’s a sad fact.
Meridiana does not only serve "leisure" routes. Their "bread&butter" routes are to/from sardinia (there home is olbia), which obviously is a holiday destination, but a lot of people live there. And since it is an island, the quickest way to get anywhere within the rest of Italy is to fly. And Meridiana offers non-stop service to quite some Italian cities from Sardinia.I dont know if they make money, but they seem to fill their planes on those routes.
10 years from now, I can't see Meridiana being too much more well-known than it is now. I just can't see Qatar being able to turn around an airline like Meridiana.
Qatar Airways will most likely send a lot of their smaller aircraft to Meridiana since most of them are grounded due to the dispute with Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt.
still baffles me how AliItalia went bankrupt...Italy is one of the top tourist destinations in the world, shouldnt a ton of $$$ flow in?
@Chris, for now Qatar Air isn't allowed in the United Arab Republic, so no Dubai fares until that dispute is resolved.
Not to make the same mistake? Like when you walk up to an Alitalia Club entrance employee in Rome, who is filing her fingernails, who looks up, and continue working on her nails?