Air Italy liquidated; fails to fulfil Qatar Airways' expansion aims

On 11-Feb-2020 Air Italy announced that its shareholders Alisarda and Qatar Airways, operating through AQA Holding SpA, had resolved to liquidate the airline.

Operations are to be suspended from 26-Feb-2020.

Formerly operating as Meridiana, it rebranded in Mar-2018 as part of a restructuring plan following the sale of a 49% stake to Qatar Airways in Sep-2017. The plan included fleet modernisation with aircraft procured from Qatar Airways and an expansion of the fleet from 11 aircraft in 2018 to 50 by 2022. It also aimed to reverse the airline's years of decline as Meridiana and for Air Italy to carry 10 million annual passengers by 2022 (versus 2.4 million in 2017).

Sadly, none of its ambitions were fully realised. It refocused from its Olbia base on Sardinia to Milan Malpensa and launched new long haul services to New York, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Toronto. However, other long haul services came and went and a second hub at Rome Fiumicino failed to take root.

The 737 MAX grounding certainly did not help, but Air Italy simply did not reach sufficient scale (its network continued to shrink), it struggled with LCC short haul competition and could not achieve profitability.