(CNN) — They’ve lengthy dominated the meals and trend worlds, this 12 months they’ve dominated sports activities, and now they’re aiming for the skies.
Italy’s new nationwide airline, ITA Airways, launched on Friday with a promise to deliver satisfaction again to its nationwide flag service, after Alitalia, Italy’s legacy airline, went bankrupt and ceased operations a day earlier.
Executives unveiled plans for the brand new community, airplanes, staffing and livery at a press convention livestreamed from Rome.
The very first thing to know: all the pieces can be centopercento italiano.
The brand new ITA Airways planes can be coloured sky-blue, with employees sporting uniforms by high Italian designers.
Interiors and airport lounges can be dressed by high-class Italian companies, and even the vehicles and minibuses used to maneuver across the grounds can be Italian.
“We’ve been born as a brand new Italian model, and we’ve got chosen to work solely with Italian corporations,” stated Alfredo Altavilla, president of ITA Airways.
Driving excessive on sporting triumph
The sky-blue livery, full with inexperienced, crimson and white tricolore stripes of the Italian flag on the tail and on the engines, is a homage to the Azzurri, Italy’s nationwide sports activities groups, who put on sky blue (“azzurro”) strips throughout competitions.
The Azzurri have, after all, executed phenomenally properly this 12 months, with the soccer staff profitable the UEFA European championships and 40 medals on the Tokyo Summer season Olympics. Italian Matteo Berrettini was the runner up within the Wimbledon tennis ultimate.
That, based on Altavilla, is the optimistic power ITA needs to deliver to the skies after the failure of Alitalia.
“Right now is the primary day of a historical past that has but to be written,” he stated.
“The brand new branding and the brand new livery of our planes are a logo of that change, of the beginning of a brand new journey.”
In response to CNN’s query about employees uniforms, Chief Advertising Officer Giovanni Perosino stated that though nothing has been introduced but, the airline is in talks with “an important Italian model” about the opportunity of designing them.
“We wish to give our purchasers an Italian expertise, and while you consider up to date Italy, it is wealthy and sophisticated,” he stated.
“So our dream is to accomplice with corporations from numerous disciplines, from the meals to the styling of the plane, to the uniforms to the furnishings within the lounges. Our imaginative and prescient is to make use of globally essential Italian manufacturers. It is our want, however we’re already speaking with large manufacturers.”
Within the meantime, they may maintain utilizing the Alitalia uniforms and livery, though they count on the planes to start out being repainted inside the first few months. The choice is partly to economize, he stated.
Alitalia no extra
Alfredo Altavilla, president of ITA Airways, on the airline launch.
Handout/ITA Airways
The information that the corporate would maintain its unique identify of ITA Airways stunned many who assumed it could wish to maintain the Alitalia model going. In paperwork filed to the US Division of Transport to request permission to fly there, it admitted plans to accumulate the Alitalia model identify.
And the evening earlier than the airline launch, it was introduced that it had purchased the Alitalia identify for €90 million ($104 million), main many to invest that the brand new airline would, basically, be the previous one.
Nevertheless, Francavilla stated there had by no means been any query of branding the airline as Alitalia.
“In my head it is all the time been ITA Airways,” he stated.
“However we have been all the time very clear not simply that we wished to purchase the Alitalia model, however that we wanted to. Not least for advertising causes — the Italian model could not belong to anybody else besides the nationwide flag service.”
A extra environment friendly fleet
Alitalia was drowning in debt for years earlier than the pandemic, however Francavilla stated that the longer term is vibrant for ITA, calling the airline “right-sized” each by way of fleet, staffing and routing.
It is plan is to function a fleet of recent Airbuses, that are each extra environment friendly and fewer damaging to the atmosphere.
The primary new jets will enter the fleet in early 2022, and by late 2025, it says that 70% of the fleet can be new-generation plane.
It plans to start out with 52, and improve to 105 by 2025.
Incentivizing smiles
However Francavilla stated the largest distinction is ready to be the service onboard.
“In your first flight, I hope you will discover a smile,” he stated. That wasn’t all the time a given from Alitalia’s beleaguered employees, however ITA has discovered a novel option to invigorate employees: each single worker can have part of their wage linked not solely to the corporate earnings, but additionally to buyer satisfaction.
“It aligns the pursuits of the employees with the purchasers,” he stated.
ITA already has a loyalty program, Volare, and it plans to hitch one of many main alliances — although Francavilla wouldn’t be drawn on which one was favored, saying all provides have been being valued.
No extra ‘battery rooster farms’
Alitalia folded on October 14 after years of monetary woes.
Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Photos
Beginning an airline in a pandemic is not any imply feat, particularly with the unhappy historical past that has gone earlier than it. ITA has unveiled an advert for the Italian public, telling them that issues ending badly — whether or not in love, sport or aviation — should not cease folks from making an attempt once more.
Francavilla says though the airline can be coming into an airspace already crowded with low-cost carriers, he wasn’t nervous about competitors. “We’re working completely different companies. I fly folks they usually fly battery rooster farms,” he stated.
He signaled that he can be preventing the subsidies paid by regional authorities to tempt lowcost carriers to their airports.
“All I am saying is that I desire a stage enjoying discipline — I do not wish to run a race beginning three minutes after the others.”
And it is excellent news for People in search of some dolce vita within the skies — ITA is specializing in the north American market, stated Emiliana Limosano, in command of the business facet, having determined it’s taking off quickest post-pandemic. Rome to New York flights begin November 4.
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