Originally Posted by
Squerez
Raistlin, you seem to like Govern intervention.
Emirates is a funded by private or governments (depends on points of view) as much as AZ (with Etihad money).
The Economy of Emirates is better than Economy of AZ. The plane A380 is also more comfortable. The problem of AZ is to focus on the creepy airport of Rome trying to serve businesses which simply do not exist in Rome. Only Italian politicians, priests and tourists: the first travel free; second and third prefer to travel cheap. They loose money and lack resources to provide the services that business travellers expect. The final end, if it is not another bankrupt (which I do not wish anyone) is simply to become a regional airline and stop bothering and lobbying to stop other competitors.
You may also want to mention (amongst
politicians &
priests) the fact that, back in the days, AZ was probably the only airline (together with KL) which actually believed in the strategic role of MXP and the North of Italy overall as focus area. The fact that this particular long-term
plan (if I may call it that way) had to be abandoned is not entirely down to the airline's responsibility as such (even though, fair enough, unions played, as ever, a
good role in that respect - see crews who had to swap base etc. etc.), given also that LIN is still, as we speak, operating at full-swing like probably never before and that other airlines (see BA & LH) are obviously making the most out of it, bringing passengers to their respective hubs. You seem to be blaming the airline for something which, I'm afraid, is mostly (if not
all) down to your (as a Country, I mean) politicians. In other countries, LIN would have probably already been limited to a few
shuttle services (as AZ even clearly requested at the time) and MXP would have most certainly seen a significant growth in the longer-term.
G