São Paulo – The Italian airline Alitalia announced this Tuesday (20), in Rome, its plans to install new routes and increase the frequency of flights leaving from Italian airports in the next few months. Within this plan, Rio de Janeiro, which already has daily flights to the Italian capital, and Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, should get more frequencies. The company promised high-quality services, new aircrafts and new routes. The goal is to make a profit in 2017. Etihad Airways, from Abu Dhabi, bought 49% of interests in the Italian company.
According to information released by Alitalia and Etihad together, the Italian company will have more routes taking off from Rome to Berlin and Dusseldorf, in Germany; San Francisco, in the United States, Santiago, in Chile, Mexico City; Beijing, China; and Seoul, South Korea. Besides Rio and Abu Dhabi, the cities of New York and Chicago, in the United States, will have an increase in frequency of flights.
In Tuesday’s (20) announcement, were also in attendance the chairman of Alitalia, Luca di Montezemolo, and James Hogan, president and CEO of Etihad Aviation Group and vice-president of Alitalia, and Silvano Cassano, Alitalia’s CEO. The executives said that the company’s focus will be to improve the quality of services and, according to Montezemolo, “put the customer at the centre of everything we do”. Until last year, Montezemolo was the president of automaker Ferrari.
However, Hogan said that the goal is to profit. “We made a commercial investment that will have to result in commercial return”, he said. The expectation of shareholders is for the company to turn a profit in 2017. According to information from the Italian News agency Ansa, the estimated return is of 100 million euros per year.
The company will work with three operation centers, that is, airports that will be its bases for operations and passenger distribution: Milan’s Malpensa, which will host more international flights; Milan’s Linate, which will have more codeshare flights with partners; and Rome’s Fiumicino, which will have long, medium and short-distance flights.
The increase in connections with Etihad’s flights will be done with frequencies from Venice, Catania, Milan and Bologna to Abu Dhabi, just as the increase of options from Rome to the capital of the United Arab Emirates. From there, passengers will use Etihad to destinations in Africa, Asia and Australia.
The increase in flights and frequencies will be done with more aircrafts. Aircrafts from Airberlin, the German airline in which Etihad has a stake, will be used by Alitalia. In total, 14 Airbus A320 will be transferred to the Italian airline, which could also receive aircrafts already ordered by Etihad or buy new long-distance ones.
After a long negotiation, Etihad acquired almost half of Alitalia in August of last year. The Italian company was going through financial difficulties and needed a capital increase to continue operating. The Arab company paid 387.5 million euros for its stake at the Italian company. Now, besides the increase in the number of flights and routes, Alitalia will stamp a new logo on aircrafts, uniforms and customer relations. But the name remains the same.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
