The Italian Aerospace Information Web
by Aeromedia - corso Giambone 46/18 - 10135 Torino (Italy)
Lufthansa Italia Announced
On November 26, 2008, Giuseppe Bonomi, president of SEA - the Malpensa airport management agency - and Wolfgang Mayrhuber, president of Lufthansa, the German national airlines, announced a new airline: “Lufthansa Italia”.
The new company will be based at Malpensa and will operate six Airbus A 319 airliners which will serve eight European destinations. From February 2, 2009, the first two flights will connect Malpensa to Barcelona and Paris/Roissy (CDG). Subsequently, flights to Bruxelles, Budapest, Bucharest and Madrid will be added. From the end of March, 2009, two more Lufthansa Italia services are planned with destinations London/Heathrow and Lisbon.
Malpensa airport has been heavily damaged in the past months by the Alitalia decision to concentrate its activity at Rome/Fiumicino airport. With the introduction of the Winter schedule, in October, a second setback for Malpensa's traffic volume came from the reduction of frequencies implemented by Alitalia. This further slow-down also affected other Italian airports. The birth of Lufthasa Italia is the reaction of the German carrier to the rumours about a possible agreement between Air France and the Alitalia remnants, after the take over by the “cordata italiana” (CAI) headed by Roberto Colaninno.
In the near future, changes are expected also for Malpensa-based Cargoitalia, an Italian all-cargo airline set up by Sintek Holding in 2005. A magazine article anticipates the possible sale of Cargoitalia to Alcide Leali, founder of Air Dolomiti, a regional airline later sold to the Lufthansa Group. In the meantime, at the beginning of December, the only aircraft of Cargoitalia - a DC-10-30F freighter - left for Africa. In the last few months, Leali set up Alis, another all-cargo airline still awaiting delivery of its first aircraft. In September, 2008, a 33% share of Alis was bought by Intesa Sanpaolo Bank. This bank is a pivotal player in the Alitalia-AirOne-Cai operation, so there is a possibility that the Alitalia Cargo assets could be transferred to the newborn Alis. At the moment, this is the complicated situation of Italian freight air transport.
While the world recession is biting hard, the Malpensa airport – besides the promotion of the Lufthansa Italia initiative – is implementing a series of actions to make up for the lost traffic. Regarding the transatlantic services, AirOne started operations with two Airbus A 330-200s, flanking U.S. airlines at Malpensa such as American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines and US Airways. An emerging market is the "shuttle" activity of carriers based in Asia and the Middle-East, including Emirates, Etihad Airways, Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways. This latter airline is also operating cargo flights. The EasyJet fleet based at Malpensa has now reached a dozen Airbus A 319s, with an increasing network of intra-European low-cost services. Germanwings and Air Berlin of Germany, and Vueling Airlines and Clickair of Spain, are the other low-fare operators at Malpensa. Other airlines, including Iran Air, introduced larger aircraft during the past Summer season. However, it might be difficult to cope with the impending slow-down of the leisure charter traffic.
In the picture: Boeing B.737-330 D-ABXX “Bad Homburg v.d. Hohe” of Lufthansa at Malpensa airport, Italy, in 2008. (Aeromedia)
(Aeromedia, November 2008)