New Alitalia, it doesn't matter if it will have few planes. What matters is that they are the right ones

These days the Alitalia knot is coming to a head. The acceleration of the new government, the wait for the green light from the European antitrust and The rewriting, or rather, updating of the business plan are the hot topics.

All the sites of the major Italian newspapers are pointing the finger at the size of the fleet, which should be less than 50 aircraft at this point, and the related cut in personnel. I find this analysis really unhelpful. The Corsera headline points to the fact that the new AZ will have a fleet one-tenth the size of Ryanair's, My opinion is: who cares.

The old company had very old planes for both short/medium haul and long haul. Not only were the planes old and dilapidated, but they also cost a lot of money, as the leasing contracts were out of all market logic.

Traffic restart

The new Alitalia will have to deal with less traffic starting with what for years was the "golden goose" of the Linate/Fiumicino a victim of pandemic, zoom and high speed.

It will have to, inescapably, say goodbye to meaningless routes that both Lufthansa and Air France have now replaced with train/airplane interchange, such as Fiumicino/Naples or Fiumicino/Florence. The same thing happens with LH, one often finds oneself in Frankfurt with a ticket for the HS train to Bonn or Cologne.

Certainly domestic traffic must be manned, both Not to abdicate completely to low-cost than to fill long-haul flights, but to do so requires a modern, adequate and efficient fleet.

Ryanair doesn't let its planes "age" by leasing them out new ones and, when maintenance costs start to affect it in terms of downtime and spare parts, it prefers to return them and order new ones. It is the only company in the world to have this strategy pushed to this level, not even the Southwest in America behaves like this.

The future will increasingly say goodbye to long-haul flights via hubs, but will see the growth of the Intercontinental point-to-point flights made via single-aisle aircraft, smaller and easier to fill and cheaper to operate. So even the need to concentrate all flights at Rome Fiumicino may no longer make sense and in this way overcome dualism with Malpensa.

The importance of the Flag Company

Tourism brings wealth and generates induced revenue; we have seen this because of the pandemic. Cities like Florence, Venice and Rome itself have seen the wealth generated by "non-essential" travel disappear.

Estimates say that Italian GDP produced by tourism, both internal and external, is worth well over 15%, if the underground and induced industries are taken into account it could mean that one-fifth of our country's wealth comes from tourism.

Selling (or selling off) the flag carrier would mean losing independence, becoming second-tier hubs.

The motivation is simple: without a network of direct flights, we would be dependent on other companies that would do anything to make tourists stop in Paris or Berlin, rather than Rome or Florence.

The new fleet

This means that Alitalia's fleet will have to be rethought from scratch, and thanks to the pandemic what was previously impossible has now become possible. We have gone from waiting lists of years to receive a Boeing 787 or an Airbus A321 to new and semi-new planes at sale price ready for the highest bidder.

We have seen in Italy, for example, how Neos has just taken possession of some former Norwegian aircraft or as many companies have cancelled orders, postponed deliveries and postponed the entry of new aircraft into the fleet.

Here, starting with less than 50 planes in this context will not be a problem for the new ITA. The newco will have money in the till to take new aircraft on lease in a few months.

The challenge will be to take the right ones like the A220 (perhaps the only aircraft that has not been canceled in this cursed year) for short to medium haul and the right mix of A321s (such as those used by Tap Portugal and Jet Blue for secondary intercontinental routes) and the more capacious 787 or A330neo for more popular and long haul routes.

Restarting also means rethinking cabin fittings, trying to offer different, quality products to entice the passenger to choose AZ livery over others.

Routes

The biggest challenge will then be to latch onto the recovery and zero in on the routes to open because Italy is, always, a market of conquest by foreign airlines and, if there is one thing all analysts agree on, it is that business customers will be the last to return to travel. Therefore, the focus will have to be on routes for nonessential travel, particularly those destinations that can be filled by both Italians heading abroad and foreigners eager to visit Italy.

The alliance

In addition to this you need to choose the right partner immediately. Staying in Skyteam with Delta and AirFrance/KLM or switch to Star Alliance With Lufthansa? Which partner is ideal to make sense of the Millemiglia program and respond to 5 million loyal customers who have been flying and racking up miles for years?

There are pros and cons to both solutions, in the first case it would be necessary to redefine relations with the allies who in recent years have kept the company on a leash by not allowing it to expand in the U.S. market and cutting it off from the New joint venture with Virgin Atlantic. In the second case, there is a risk of being "squeezed" between the German group and its subsidiaries, Turkish and the strong expansion of Egypt Air and Ethiopian, which could preclude a possible opening to the North African market.

One thing is certain, it is time to decide otherwise better to close down.

• Millemiglia