Alitalia: in the blink of an eye

Yesterday the Italian airline Alitalia disappeared, after seventy four years, before reappearing minutes later in its new guise as – Alitalia.

ABC News explains:

Italy’s bankrupt national airline, Alitalia, made its final flights Thursday before formally folding, marking the end of business for the 74-year-old carrier and an end of an era for Italy.

A flight attendant at Rome’s Fiumicino-Leonardo da Vinci Airport thanked passengers for their loyalty before boarding the noon Flight AZ1581 to Cagliari, Sardinia. The last scheduled Alitalia flight was the return from Cagliari, Flight AZ1586, due to land at 11 p.m. Thursday.

Alitalia, which had operated in the red for more than a decade, will be replaced by a new national carrier, ITA, or Italy Air Transport, which launches Friday with a celebratory aircraft emblazoned with a “Born in 2021″ across it, news reports said.

But to most ordinary passengers, little may seemingly have changed overnight: On Thursday, ITA completed negotiations to purchase the Alitalia brand and the Alitalia.com domain, paying 90 million euros for the right to be called Alitalia.

The debt disappeared, the staff got thrown overboard, but the brand lives on.

The former workers “cast doubt about the viability of the new airline and said its slimmed-down size, workforce, routes and fleet was presumably aimed at making it attractive for a foreign airline to buy”.

Remind me again: who makes Marmite nowadays?