ContinentalEWR wrote:MIflyer12 wrote:jsfr wrote:
If ITA is given the chance to choose the (few) young, motivated, dynamic, positive and (often) cheaper employees, they may well have a chance.
If the government looks at politics as usual and makes them keep the old, unionised, inefficient, customer-hating, self-entitled Alitalia employees of the past...
Two references to age - that's unfortunate. You're decades out of date regarding EU (and U.S.) prohibitions on age discrimination in employment.
Attitudes -
customer hating,
self-entitled - are subjective. I'm more interested in first year financials to see if they have improved productivity measures relative to successful European carriers, like ASKs per full-time equivalent employee, or revenue per employee.
Truly outdated statement and comment regarding age and employment for sure, and an uneducated assessment. The issue with AZ has always been its employees though. As recently as 2017 or 2018, they had an opportunity to participate in the development of a new carrier and refused it, as Etihad walked away. But it goes much further back than that. Italy's powerful (too powerful) trade unions are to blame. Th
While the Unions definitely carry part of the blame, they are not the only responsible for the abismal history of Alitalia. Management played an important part too. Alitalia´s history is full of shortsighted decisions. On the Fleet for example. They ordered 8 DC10-30 only to get rid of them within few years as a knee-jerk reaction to the infamous accidents of the 70s (of which the model was not responsible). They didn´t even replace them with other models and left the long haul fleet in the hand of a few Boeing 747s, while competing airines ketp their DC10s and grew their presence on the world markets.
They ordered 18 B727-200Adv late, when the model was not that modern anymore and retired them quickly, replacing them with MD80s.
They got 6 Fokker 70 of the 15 originally ordered before the manufacturere went bankrupt and got rid of them quickly instead of trying to get a few more on the used market.
They were launch customers of the E170, got rid of them after few years and ordered them again, though in the form of E175 and E190.
When it was time to expand on the intercontinental market after the european deregulation, they had a small and disomogeneous fleet of wet leased 763, only 5 full pax MD11 and the only 3 ever built (I wonder why) MD11 Combi and a few left over B747-200.
More recently, they got 1 (one!) B777-300ER. Not even enough to cover one route daily, while competitors were flying tens of the model.
And politics always played a major role in Alitalia. The company has always been managed as a political tool rather than an airline. It has always been a reservoir of favours and votes in a system of political clientele.
Not to mention the changing hub from FCO to MXP back to FCO for an airline than never had the critical mass to sustain even one hub.
Italy has many excellent examples of successful multinational companies, not all of them private. But somehow on the civil aviation side, the Country never managed to create a company which could actually compete with its peers and it has almost always need the finanacial support of the State.