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What about the casual, the precarious and the forced annex to the protocol dedicated to the needs of seasonal workers? Alitalia CAI and Airone will affect up to one thousand units in total who have lent their work in last 36 months.

As was written in La Republica on 26th of September last year, during the direct talks between Cai, unions and government. The content is visible here. At a distance of just over a year however, things fell apart and promises broken. Alitalia is sluggish and the budget that was supposed to be balanced in the third quarter looks more like a hot broth than a signal of recovery. Many initiatives, some only "cosmetic", even commendable, but totally ignoring the fundamental problems and issues. But back to the topic of the precariousness at the moment.. It seems rather strange.

The story is known: the airline has always used seasonal workers to cope with the passenger traffic at certain times of the year. Actually using the term "seasonal" is improper for two reasons. The first: one can not define "season" for someone who works 10 months a year, considering holidays as a permanent employees, it is easy to see that the needs of the workforce is linked to extraordinary peaks. This is truly precarious and studied scientifically. Two: there can be seasonal assistance, with the first premise, those who remain precarious for years (even 7+) without the certainty of tomorrow and without permanent contracts or confirmation of extension. We wonder what happened to the agreement mentioned a few lines above in the link. The same labour minister Sacconi had said repeatedly that it would be safeguarded season with at least 3 years of seniority (Season 2005/2006)). But CAI continues to train staff and take on short term contracts, new seasons, broadening the base of the 'desperate' and leaving at home who has invested its future in Alitalia.

The latest find would be the temporary contracts, that are outsourced to the recruitment and HR giant Adecco. According to reliable sources rather than CAI (news two weeks ago), the company has made NO pension contributions to INPS, in practice the beginning of his administration. The details came out when the Institute of Insurance has asked a number of workers, the payroll for the period of employment for a specific time to calculate the unemployment allowance payables. knowing that the figures are determined by contributions. A specific request for clarification to the Town council employees have responded, not without embarrassment, that their contributions were not paid for the whole period. An answer to hasty employee or harsh reality? To be continued ....

"Our" former flag carrier has dedicated itself these past days quite visible in ads of triumphalism and the inauguration of the new dedicated check in counters at the airport of Fiumicino which has seen the presence of the political elite. Will this not be the prelude to new public funding for a company that is today supposedly totally private?

In short, we are seeing people who went out of the door now trying to get back through the window. We had refused to have an airline that would link our country with others in which there is a strong Italian presence and now, all this euphoria seems a "bit" exaggerated.

We analyze the salient points of the new direction of the company and set out in recent days. "The planes are traveling with good margins of punctuality." Well! But it should be the norm, why brag?.

"You just cancelled 1 flight every three days. Let people know we do not feel part of this marketing or promotion. Why were the laid off employees sacrificed to blame the old management and the shortcomings of the government? It would be much better to announce the return of these people, once happened, for even a small number of these employees, otherwise we can not help but think that this is only of empty propaganda.

Tour operators had almost no references and can not schedule any reasonable packages for the upcoming season because they do not know neither the price nor the operations of this season which is rather serious. The leadership of the company then claimed not to fear competition from high speed trains but in fact already suffer it.
It 'very positive that at Fiumicino airport Alitalia could take advantage of a unique terminal, this will enable it to implement economies of scale and bring prestige to the call; benefits for passengers are all however to be verified.

From insiders we could not prevent some of being critical because over the years we have witnessed too many metamorphoses regarding Alitalia and we are simply watching yet another and another and another that somehow will undermine, once again, the public finances.

Alstom reckons that for any journey of less than 600 miles, a high-speed train is the clear winner door-to-door

It sounds like some terrible stunt on Top Gear, in which the three presenters put a high-speed train through its paces against an Airbus jet and a Ferrari in a chase between, say, Milan and Rome.

We know that Jeremy Clarkson’s Italian stallion will disappear for hours in a traffic jam on the outskirts of the Italian capital, so is the excitement about whether the train pips the plane?

Of course, says Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV), a private venture that is building 25 blood-red locos at a cost of €1 billion for a super-fast service that eventually will run from Turin to Naples. Alstom, which makes TGV trains for SNCF, is supplying NTV with AGV trains, Alstom’s cutting-edge technology, a lighter, more energy-efficient rail vehicle than the old TGV. The new service, to be called Italo when it is launched in two years, will shorten the Milan-Rome journey to three hours, centre to centre, fast enough to obliterate Alitalia’s shuttles.

Alstom reckons that for any journey of less than 600 miles, a high-speed train is the clear winner door-to-door. That has been the case for several years and Air France has bowed to the inevitable, quietly shelving its Lyons-Paris and Paris-Brussels services.

And this is where the Top Gear fantasy ends and a new race begins, because the airlines are trying to beat railways at their own game. By 2015, European high-speed rail networks become open to cross-border competition and Air France has teamed up with Veolia, a freight rail operator, to launch a competing high-speed service to bring passengers from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to London’s St Pancras terminal. Eurostar is already taking the lion’s share of London-Paris traffic and is eating away at the Brussels market. Airlines make little or no money on short-haul European routes, so it makes sense to let the train take the pain by decorating leased locos in airline livery. From St Pancras, Air France is in pole position to steal BA customers in Essex and Kent who resent the troublesome trek to Heathrow.

And then there is climate change — in France, with the nuclear-powered electricity grid, the railways can claim a low-carbon advantage. In Britain, it is not so simple, but the convenience of the train is hard to beat.

Alliance gets common check-in at Heathrow while Italian carrier gets a dedicated terminal in Rome

The SkyTeam alliance has unveiled new common check-in facilities at Heathrow’s terminal 4.

The group of nine airlines, which includes Air France-KLM and Delta Airlines, has opened a dedicated check-in area for first, business and premium economy passengers. The facility, the first in the world which can be used by passengers on all SkyTeam member airlines, will open to its first passengers on 5 November. It includes 14 check-in desks and 10 self-service kiosks. Premium check-in will also be available for Elite and Elite Plus members of SkyTeam frequent flyer programmes.

The airline is also set to open a second floor of its co-branded SkyTeam lounge on 9 November. The new floor includes a quiet room with day beds, VIP rooms and a children’s area with games and television. The first floor of the lounge opened this summer.

The opening of the new facilities comes in the same month that all of the SkyTeam carriers at Heathrow move under one roof. Delta, KLM and Kenya Airways currently operate out of terminal 4 with the others set to join them later this month.

The SkyTeam alliance has also this week moved into a shared facility at Barcelona’s terminal 1.

Meanwhile, Alitalia has moved into its own dedicated terminal at Rome Fiumicino. Terminal 1 will now be used to handle Alitalia’s domestic flights as well as services to international destinations in the Schengen area. The airline’s codeshare services with Air France-KLM will also operate through the terminal

The airline has also relaunched its Rome-Milan Linate shuttle services under the RomaMilano – MilanoRoma banner. The service, which operates more than 70 times a day, with a frequency of one every 15 minutes at the busiest times, will have dedicated check-in areas and security controls.

Alitalia’s other services from Rome, including services to and from the UK, will move to terminal 1 over the next two or three years.

The economic crisis we are going through is tough and it is not over yet. It has also impacted very negatively on the sector of air transport. It is hard to find airlines with good economic results nowadays. IATA, the global airlines association is still prognosing big losses in 2009 and that in 2010, same or greater than the ones from 2008. In 2009, for example, the airline industry expects to lose about 7.3 bln euros. Very few companies managed in a masterly way go into profit in a market that is so difficult.

The transaction of CAI Alitalia could not arise in a worse market environment. How are things going at this level of economic viability? From Sabelli know that in 2009 the first quarter was a loss of 210 million, the second a loss of 63 million and the third went in balance. Overall, therefore, for the first nine months of this year we have a loss of 273 million.

If we consider that in recent years the old Alitalia loses were about one million euro per day (i.e. 365 million at year end), we can say that we are not sure that, in monetary values, the new Alitalia will actually be any better in 2009 than a typical year of the old Alitalia. Everything will depend on the last quarter, traditionally not as profitable for the airlines.

Be enough, unfortunately, a loss of 92 million in the fourth quarter will have a monetary value in the performance of the new Alitalia in line with the old Alitalia. If the loss were higher, as estimated, we would have an even worse economic performance. From these few simple considerations, it is easy to argue that those politicians who claim that Alitalia has now been restored can not be believed.

All the more, so if compared with the loss over the first nine months of turnover, as it should be done to make comparisons in terms of the margin of loss expressed in percentage, we find that the new Alitalia is unfortunately much higher than the old, being the first turnover of the lowest in the second, because of the weight loss sustained by the company with the restructuring.

It is therefore possible that unfortunately all the cuts made (planes left the ground, staff layoffs, reduced wages for hours worked) and the benefits granted unilaterally (suspension of antitrust, debt elimination, defending monopoly positions on some major domestic routes ) is not sufficient to restructure Alitalia by 2009. It is hoped that the next few years may go better and that no further "crackdowns" on the pay terms of personnel or the size of company.

It could be that in the severe loss of the first quarter 2009 have entered some non-recurring start-up costs. Moreover, the economic improvement is expected for 2010 could result in a better situation. Even the commercial strategy of the company could improve. But this positive scenario is currently terribly uncertain and everything to build.

Good luck and good work Dr. Sabelli. The challenge is really difficult and very challenging. I hope that she with her team bring myself and that in three years we still have an Italian airline, profitable and growing.

Meridia, through its subsidiary Aeronautical Maintenance, has reached an agreement on the union contract for the new organization of work Atitech, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alitalia Servizi under special administration. Atitech is active in the maintenance and overhaul of aircraft.

The agreement specifies the note today of Merida, was achieved within the time established by the extension requested by the Special Commissioner of Alitalia Augusto Fantozzi to October 27, term of effectiveness and irrevocability of the proposal for the purchase of shares representing the entire capital Social Atitech.

Reaching agreement on the union contract, adds meridian, and a further step towards the successful conclusion of the joint offer to purchase made on 29 July 2009 in the framework defined by Meridie with Alitalia and Finmeccanica to acquire 100% of Atitech.

This agreement is still made conditional on certain conditions precedent including the renewal of concessions with Gesac (management company of the International Airport of Naples) regarding the use by Atitech hangar and office building inside the airport of Capodichino.

A project in defining the brand identity of the new services of Alitalia in the RomaMilano-MilanoRoma route is to be developed by Robilant Associati, an Italian market leader in brand Advisory and promotion.

After identifying the location of the service within the portfolio of Bidding by Alitalia, reads a note, the creative team Robilant Associati has created a study for the name and the visual identity as well as the personalization of media communications, space at airports. Moreover, Italians are to communicate the profound internal change taking place, Robilant Associati has supported the company through the design of the information campaign "Alitalia, working for you."

The objective of the whole operation is to make a return to Alitalia being a market leader in Italy and a synonym of international success. "To contribute to the relaunch of the Alitalia brand, says Maurizio di Robilant, president and founder of Robilant Associati - but above all an opportunity to contribute to strengthening the reputation of "know how " of Italian businesses in the World. Our commitment is substantiated in adherence to this mission is shared with Alitalia."

"The most interesting about this project - said Roger Botti, Chief Operating Officer and Creative RobilantAssociati - was the correspondence between the company and the strategy developed vision proposed by our team. Alitalia intends to update its original position, starting at its glorious past. Robilant Associati has implemented a project that interprets the status of airline expressing the authoritativeness, the vanguard in the services and tools and the unique Italian style. A real 'Back To The Future'.

The process of naming has led to the design of a name, RomaMilano - MilanoRoma, which combines in a simple and straightforward the two cities'. RobilantAssociati has also edited the personalization of the exterior of Terminal 1 at Rome's Fiumicino airport, which will become 'the new "House Alitalia", exclusively dedicated to the Italian airline's flights, airport and spaces of Rome Fiumicino and Milan Linate dedicated to new service.

Continental Airlines finds some new friends with the Star Alliance, one of the three major airline groups. But there's something missing from all this alliance talk—us passengers.

Chief executives from several of the world's largest airlines scurried between New York hotels and the Big Apple's airports this week, all to publicize what they consider to be a big deal: The defection of Continental Airlines to the Star Alliance.

The 16-months-in-the-making shift of Continental to Star from the SkyTeam alliance is only the most recent maneuver in the high-stakes global competition between the three airline groupings that now dominate the skies. When Japan Airlines teetered on the edge of collapse last month, Delta Air Lines and Air France-KLM were prepared to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into Asia's largest carrier. The goal: Woo JAL away from the Oneworld alliance and into SkyTeam, which is fronted by Delta and Air France. Meanwhile, American Airlines and British Airways, key partners in Oneworld, are a year into their third attempt to convince U.S. and European regulators to grant them antitrust immunity to share routes and collaborate on prices.

If these moves seem vaguely comical—airline alliances are jokingly compared to as everything from Mafia families to the political allegiances that drove World War I—think again. Less than full-on mergers but much more than casual corporate cooperation, airline alliances are now the driving factor in how carriers plan routes, price seats, create products and services, coordinate airport facilities, and even design the benefits of their loyalty programs.

Take Continental's move to Star, for example. One of Star's founding partners, United Airlines, says that Continental's arrival will mean $100 million in new revenue for United next year. Continental, meanwhile, juggled its route network in the run-up to its move to Star. Out were many flights to Atlanta, Detroit, Memphis, and Cincinnati, all hubs operated by Delta. In were new flights to places like Washington/Dulles, one of United's hubs. Continental is moving its operations at the airports in Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Honolulu, Frankfurt, and Chicago to be closer to the gates and check-in counters of United and other Star Alliances partners. Continental says that it changed the fare codes on more than six million existing passenger reservations to align them with the rules, regulations, and designation of its new Star Alliance partners. Both United and Continental announced changes to their proprietary frequent-flier programs to make the rules and benefits look more consistent to travelers.

"Alliances mean tens of billions of dollars of decisions," one airline insider told me recently. At Star, he pointed out, control of the pricing on many code-shared flights of the Star partners is moving to Continental from United. "That means entirely new sets of eyeballs looking at how fares are set, what sales and prices to promote, and what the yield-management targets are."

Although airlines have been cooperating to some degree or another since the dawn of commercial air travel, the current wave of formalized, global alliances began in 1992, when British Airways forged a deal with what was then called US Air. The carriers called the then-unprecedented cooperation "the first major step toward the creation of a truly global airline group."

It never happened, of course. BA and US Air parted ways when British Airways and United Airlines formulated an alliance. The last physical reminder of that attempt to shape worldwide aviation is at New York's Kennedy Airport, where BA and United still share a terminal building rather than co-locating with their respective current alliance partners. Other airlines were pursuing other alliances too, and virtually all of those deals (with names like Wings, European Quality Alliance, and One Ticket) are also long gone.

These days, Oneworld estimates that 60 percent of the world's commercial airline capacity is affiliated by one of the three existing alliances and all but two of the world's 20 largest carriers are members of Star, SkyTeam, or Oneworld. The largest, Star, includes 25 airlines that range from household names like United, Lufthansa, and Singapore Airlines to regional carriers such as Blue 1 of Finland and Shanghai Airlines of China. After the loss of Continental, SkyTeam is anchored by Delta and the Air France-KLM conglomerate, but also includes carriers such as Korean Air, Alitalia, Aeroflot, and Kenya Airways. Besides American Airlines, British Airways, and Japan Airlines, Oneworld includes Cathay Pacific, Iberia, and Qantas.

But if all this alliance talk seems somehow stilted, it is. The missing element is us passengers.

Going all the way back to the BA-US Air pairing, carriers have promised that alliances would offer fliers seamless global connections, simplified prices, consistent service, and a raft of soft benefits such as frequent-flier program reciprocity and interchangeable club-access privileges. The reality has always fallen far short of the promises.

United Airlines, for example, denies members of its Mileage Plus frequent-flier program access to many award seats available on its Star Alliance partners. Although the rules specifically allow it and the airline promotes the awards, the carrier has bluntly said that it would be too costly for United to buy all of the seats on partner airlines that Mileage Plus members try to claim. The discussion boards at FlyerTalk are rife with posts from outraged international flyers who were denied entry to an airport lounge operated by one alliance partner or another. On a more practical note and despite the growth of so-called co-located airport terminals, no alliance can ensure that their flights operate anywhere near the connecting service operated by an alliance partner.

Any flier who's ever lost a bag or had a flight disruption on a code-shared itinerary can tell you how little impact an alliance has on the actual travel experience. More often than not, carriers shift the blame and responsibility to each other rather than treat the traveler as a customer of a seamless alliance. Usually, the traveler is forced to bounce back and forth between individual airline power centers in order to locate the lost bag or rebook the busted itinerary.

Or then there's this tidbit from Continental's defection to Star. Continental operates a two-class in-flight configuration (coach and business) on its international routes. That's at odds with many of its new Star Alliance partners such as Lufthansa, Singapore, South African Airways, All Nippon, and Air New Zealand. They offer at least three classes of in-flight service. Where's the consistency and opaque experience if each alliance partner offers a different type of in-flight service?

Of course, carping about the internal logic or cross-carrier passenger service you'll experience within any particular alliance is a fool's game, one best left to travelers who believe the soaring rhetoric of airline chief executives and the mostly hollow promise of the alliances' promotional campaigns.

"Alliances are not about you," Jack Foley, executive vice president of Aer Lingus, told me in 1999 when the Irish carrier joined Oneworld. "Alliances are about what is good for airlines, not passengers."

The Fine Print… Aer Lingus left Oneworld in 2007, and the growth of that alliance has stalled because regulators on both sides of the Atlantic worry about granting wide-ranging antitrust immunity to American Airlines and British Airways. The two carriers control a large portion of the U.S.-U.K. market and a huge percentage of the takeoff and landing slots at London's Heathrow Airport. Previous antitrust requests (in 1996 and 2001) floundered when BA balked at surrendering slots at Heathrow. The Financial Times implied this week that regulators will once again demand BA give up Heathrow slots as the price of an antitrust exemption.

Today at 12.00pm there will be the opening of the bids received for the sale of the sixth batch of 14 Embraer ERJ -145 aircraft which belonged to the old Alitalia as valuation made last June, to the amount of EUR 30 million.

Speaking in the plural, one generalises, as from early October only one proposal was reached, that ironically offered EUR 24.5 million, resulting in the request for bids to rise knowing that the deadline expired at 5:00pm last Friday.

The ERJ-145 is a passengers’ plane destined for medium range. It is characterised by low wing with a T tail, powered by two turbo-fan engines installed on the rear. It has a basic configuration for the transport of 52 passengers, while the configuration Alitalia Express is for 48 passengers. This is due to the presence of a cupboard for coats, on board, for and for the reduction of two rows of seats to guarantee a better comfort on board. It is one of the most popular regional aircraft in the world.

"Before the 2010 summer season, we will enter the joint venture with Air France-Klm and Delta. We will become part of a group that moves 100 million passengers worldwide and that has a market share of more than 25% on the connections between North America and Europe'' said Alitalia managing director Rocco Sabelli, during the opening of the T1 Terminal in Fiumicino for Alitalia and its partners. Sabelli defended the choice for Air France: ''As a manager I have no doubts that the agreement with Air France is the best we could make, also because this opens the doors to an even larger operation'' he said, referring to the joint venture.