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Second marriage for Alitalia
During the first days of July the expected alliance between Alitalia and Air France was sealed. The agreement terms exclude a full merger but focuse on a commercial collaboration aimed to the development of a joint network.
In the same days another memorandum of understanding was signed with Delta Airlines, strategic partner of Air France inside the global alliance SkyTeam. Thus it is very probable that in a short time Alitalia will join SkyTeam, which is also composed by smaller airlines like Korean Airlines, Aero Mexico and CSA, as a full member.
Alitalia is experiencing a very critical phase. After the negative experience suffered with the former agreement with Dutch carrier KLM, the airline tried a "stand alone" policy which brought negative results to the 2000 financial balance. In a period of general down-turn in air traffic, the new Alitalia board, headed by Franco Mengozzi, is facing some hard choices somehow far from the traditional position of Alitalia as the Italian flag carrier. Moreover the Malpensa-oriented strategy failed to bring the desired results in terms of traffic and revenue.
The still largerly State-owned Alitalia could face some problems before to be fully integrated inside SkyTeam. In the short term, a more balanced share of air traffic between Italy and France, now heavily in favour of Air France, will occur. But the forthcoming big match will be the new partners armonization in the long range services, where Alitalia risks to loose its direct position over the North Atlantic. In the other way it could aspire to focuse its network in the Southbound Middle Eas/Far Asia services.
Considering that the all-out hub policy is already in the declining phase, the new agreement may affect in some way the existing SkyTeam European hub asset. If Paris and Rome appear to be fully compatible, Malpensa and Lyon apeaar to be too close in order to reach a full development.
As an anticipation of this Italian-French aviation agreement, since a while an Alitalia MD-80 is flying in Renault colours.
In the picture: McDonnell Douglas MD-82 I-DACP of Alitalia, painted with an advertisiment of Renault Megane. (photo by Aeromedia)
(Aeromedia, August 2001)