Etihad Finally Buys Into Alitalia

Rome/Abu Dhabi (Jun25th) - The struggling Italian flag carrier Alitalia receives financial aid from the Gulf Airline Etihad. As media reported Wednesday the Abu Dhabi based carrier is to obtain 49 per cent of Alitalia’s shares. Commentators spoke about 1.2 billion EUR of investments in the next four years. Therefore Etihad is once again reinforcing its position in the European market. It was not yet disclosed how much Etihad is to pay for almost half of all Alitalia shares.

Etihad 777 duruing Approach. Pic: russavia via commons cc.2.0

Etihad’s CEO – James Hogan – had long hesitated to close the deal with Alitalia. Earlier this year he told journalists that he needed a clear perspective in order to invest into the carrier. In recent years Alitalia went more and more into deficit as it lost in both the domestic and the long haul market. Etihad has so far invested in the second biggest German airline Air Berlin, the Latvian flag carrier Air Baltic and set up the regional carrier Darwin Airlines as Etihad regional in order to generate traffic from Europe to use the Gulf as a hub for highly profitable long haul connections. 

AU/pvk