Qatar Airways CEO: Meridiana To Rebrand As Air Italy

I understand change happens but this is no way to go about it. The new flight schedule is terrible. Not only is the JFK - PMO route no longer a direct flight but you have to sit at MXP for 7 hours! They took the only thing that made it an attractive airline and dismantled it. Time to go back to flying Alitalia.

The 19.2 in Milan press conference for the presentation of Air Italy (Meridiana name will be not used soon) new mission as hub carrier based on Milan Malpensa. One of the reason of the disasters of Alitalia was de decision to try to create an hub on Rome FCO airport. Al Baker will attend the press conference and all press and Italian media are invited.

Ben- I thought you were more cosmopolitan than that. Sicilian? Really? You obviously don't spend enough time on the ground after all the flights you take. Using a name like Sicilian would be a death sentence for the airline. The Northern Italians (who are the ones with most of the money) would never fly an airline called Sicilian as many of them don't even consider Sicily as 100% part of Italy.

The EU commission has clearly stated that a loan at market rates is not a subsidy. It would be a subsidy if the loan were at a lower rate than what a company could get from banks. In this case, the state helps because Italian banks are not currently in the position of granting such a risky loan, but in the (unlikely, to be honest) event that the debt is paid in full, the Italian treasury pulls out a profit. The most likely outcome will be that the debt will be paid in part. And the result will be that, for a portion of the money spent, the state will have avoided a bigger loss in terms of social costs (special unemployment compensation for everyone, and employees would not hurry too much in finding a new job), damage to the economy and damage to tourism. In this case, the loan has been granted to make the company survive until a buyer is found. The buyer (probably LH, but there may be surprises) will reduce redundant operations and decrease some costs but will continue the flight activity, as AZ long range flights have an excellent occupancy ratio (Italy is a high income country with 60M people, it's not a small market) and most assets of the company are in good conditions (newly refurbished business class, new lounges, new branding, very profitable FFP). So, it made much more sense to grant a loan and sell the company, rather than letting everything go legs up. Also because you can't leave two important regions like Sardinia and Sicily with almost no connecting flight to a major hub, it's madness. HS trains provide good point-to-point domestic connecitons, but they do not include the major airports in their network, so they cannot integrate the loss of feeder flights. It's not Germany, where LH could easily step in to replace AB. @alan Qatar serves also local food, depending on the departure. When departing from Italy, they serve very good Italian dishes. I've had a tremendous ossobuco in the VCE-DOH flight.

I hope they do not bring on the Qatar menu - who needs more mezza or fried tofu. Good quality Italian food would be so much better than the طعام سيئ taeam sayiy served on Qatar.