{"id":4038,"date":"2019-03-18T13:10:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T18:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4038"},"modified":"2019-03-18T13:10:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T18:10:31","slug":"alitalia-future-uncertain-as-easyjet-quits-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4038","title":{"rendered":"Alitalia Future Uncertain as easyJet Quits Talks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LONDON (Reuters) – The future of Alitalia was plunged further into uncertainty on Monday after British budget airline easyJet pulled out of talks to rescue the Italian carrier two weeks before a deadline to save it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EasyJet said it had decided to withdraw from the process after discussions with Italy’s state-controlled railway Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane and U.S. airline Delta Air Lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alitalia was put under special administration in 2017 after workers rejected the latest in a long line of rescue plans, leaving the government once again seeking a buyer to save the airline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ferrovie is racing against the clock to meet deadline of the end of the month set by the Italian government to present a rescue plan for Alitalia, and had been in talks with easyJet and Delta over a possible deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the parties had not seen see eye to eye on the structure of a deal. Without an industrial partner fully on board, a source said last week that Alitalia could soon find itself in trouble since neither Ferrovie nor the state have the skills to run the carrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delta said it was still in talks with Ferrovie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Discussions remain ongoing as Alitalia is a long-standing partner of Delta,” the U.S. airline said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alitalia and Ferrovie could not immediately be reached for a comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EasyJet, whose shares were unaffected by Monday’s announcement, had said several times it was interested in Alitalia’s short-haul operations and positions at primary airports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A source familiar with the talks said easyJet still believed it could be a good partner for Alitalia, but that a deal was not feasible with the current approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“EasyJet pulled out because it wanted to control (Alitalia’s) Milan hub and use it for point-to-point flights. This could not be done,” another source with knowledge of the matter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EasyJet said it remained committed to Italy, as a key market for the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We continue to invest in the three bases in Milan, Naples, (and) Venice,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Reporting by Alistair Smout in London and Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Agnieszka Flak in Milan and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome; Editing by Keith Weir and Mark Potter)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"

British pilot Kate McWilliams became the world’s youngest ever commercial airline captain at age 26 with easyJet. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The future of Alitalia was plunged further into uncertainty on Monday after British budget airline easyJet pulled out of talks to rescue the Italian carrier two weeks before a deadline to save it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[797,89,2203,1210,1397,868,1103],"tags":[1690,539,420,257,624,1190,1925,3644,246,419,3643,1125,2063,3767,1931,1926,540,2742,3768,412,1485,310,3017,1288,2132,3645,3769],"class_list":["post-4038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airline-news","category-aviation-news","category-finance-news","category-railroad-news","category-stock-news","category-transportation-news","category-travel-news","tag-administration","tag-air","tag-airline","tag-alitalia","tag-british","tag-budget","tag-carrier","tag-dello","tag-delta","tag-easyjet","tag-ferrovie","tag-hub","tag-italian","tag-italiane","tag-italy","tag-lcc","tag-lines","tag-milan","tag-naples","tag-news","tag-plan","tag-railway","tag-rescue","tag-reuters","tag-special","tag-stato","tag-venice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4041,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions\/4041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}