{"id":4136,"date":"2019-03-27T22:31:02","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T03:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4136"},"modified":"2019-03-27T22:31:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T03:31:08","slug":"alitalia-asks-italian-railways-to-speed-up-rescue-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4136","title":{"rendered":"Alitalia Asks Italian Railways to Speed Up Rescue Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MILAN, March 27 (Reuters) – The three commissioners running Alitalia are putting pressure on Ferrovie dello Stato to present a rescue plan for the troubled airline but are willing to allow it more time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alitalia was put under special administration in 2017 after workers rejected its most recent rescue plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State-owned Ferrovie, which said last year it was interested in Alitalia, is racing to meet an end of March deadline set by Rome to present a business plan for the troubled carrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ferrovie, which has been spearheading the rescue efforts, is looking to create a transport consortium to offer consumers a one-stop shop for travel inside and outside Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The railway group said in a statement on Wednesday it needed more time to go into further details on the rescue plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The special commissioners in a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday said the main risk facing Alitalia was the possibility of the airline falling into liquidation if there was no rescue package in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A deadline extension for Ferrovie could only be very short… we are talking about weeks, not months,” Alitalia Special Commissioner Daniele Discepolo said during the hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discepolo, Enrico Laghi and Stefano Paleari have been working flat out to cut costs and revive travellers’ confidence in the carrier in the hope a consortium of industrial partners would take it over and pay back a 900 million euro bridge loan granted by the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The loan needs to be repaid by the end of June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Either Ferrovie files a request for an extension that is backed by documents or it is better they walk away because we are using public money — I don’t want to say we are burning it — to make the airline fly,” Discepolo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the law would force them to put the carrier into liquidation if time ran out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ferrovie, which is in negotiations with U.S. carrier Delta Air Lines, also said it was talking with a “small group of potential partners” without giving further details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The railways group is prepared to take up to 30 percent of Alitalia, sources have said. To date it has secured a commitment from Delta to take an additional stake of up to 15 percent, leaving open the question of who would buy the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commissioners said that under their management Alitalia had made substantial progress, adding the airline was now attractive to potential buyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alitalia’s revenues rose 3.5 percent last year to 3.07 billion euros ($3.5 billion), documents prepared for the parliamentary hearing showed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It recorded a loss at the core earnings (EBITDA) level of 120 million euros, down from 283 million euros in 2017. ($1 = 0.8879 euros) (Reporting by Francesca Landini. Editing by Jane Merriman)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The three commissioners running Alitalia are putting pressure on Ferrovie dello Stato to present a rescue plan for the troubled airline but are willing to allow it more time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[797,89,868,1103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airline-news","category-aviation-news","category-transportation-news","category-travel-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4136","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=4136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4138,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4136\/revisions\/4138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}