ITA Airways Exists Because Italy Couldn’t Let Alitalia Go
On October 14, 2021, Alitalia flew for the last time, and the next morning ITA Airways took off with half the fleet, a quarter of the staff and a $105 million name it could not use. Behind that handover sat an estimated $15 billion in rescues, a takeover Italy turned down in 2008, and two decades of decisions that each made sense to whoever signed them. This is how ITA Airways came to exist, how it made its first profit by getting smaller, and why Lufthansa is now set to own 90 percent of it.
The skinny
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