Italian flag carrier Alitalia may start cancelling flights from Monday as it is having problems buying fuel and could lose its operating licence if it fails to seal a deal with unions to avoid total collapse. "There are difficulties relating to the supply of fuel which could put some flights at risk," Alitalia's bankruptcy commissioner, Augusto Fantozzi, said in a statement on Saturday.
Fantozzi had said he would start winding up the airline from Friday if unions did not agree to a take-over by a group of Italian investors. So far he has held off launching liquidation procedures but said Alitalia's situation was "plummeting".
Its collapse would be a political disaster for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who promised voters he would use his business contacts to find an Italian buyer for the near-bankrupt airline and on Saturday blamed the opposition for the crisis. And while Alitalia's woes are related to years of political interference, it also has suffered from soaring fuel costs and economic downturn that are pressuring the sector world-wide.
Hundreds of airline staff, who had been holding a noisy ad hoc demonstration at Rome's Fiumicino airport, fell silent as the news that planes would start to be grounded was read out by a union official. Italy's civil aviation authority Enac said Alitalia's licence to operate was in jeopardy. "If there is no solution very soon that guarantees the continuity of the carrier's operations, the basis on which Enac issued Alitalia with a six-month provisional licence will no longer be met," Enac said in a statement.
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