I can't find a more authoritative source for the oft-repeated "one single year of profit" story - I don't want to look into it too much for fear of disproving it, because it is a *great* story....

EDIT: This FT.com article from April 2017 states:"For decades, successive Italian governments have propped up Alitalia as a matter of national pride and political survival, ploughing an estimated €7bn into it since the 1970s despite the fact that it rarely turned an annual profit" and later quotes a Jonathan Wober as saying that "It hasn’t made a profit since the last century".


https://www.businesstravel.fr/analys...-alitalia.html