Italia Trasporto Aereo (ITA) has commenced operations as the new state-owned Italian airline, following Alitalia’s permanent shutdown on Thursday, 14th October.
Its first flights took off on Friday morning from Milan Linate Airport, with the first departure being AZ1637 to Bari at 6:27 am local time. The first ITA flight from Rome took off at 8:03 am, heading to Milan Linate.
The new airline is branding itself as ITA Airways. This comes after a back and forth with the Alitalia name. Until now, it wasn’t clear what name ITA would use. On Thursday, the company bought branding rights for the Alitalia name for 90 million Euros.
However, Italia Trasporto Aereo will not use that name despite spending a large amount of funding on it. The airline instead wants to prevent potential competitors from acquiring the rights in an auction that was set up by the government.
ITA will be based in Rome Fiumicino and Milan Linate, operating an all-Airbus fleet, consisting of aircraft previously operated by Alitalia. The company signed deals with Airbus and ALC to add several new aircraft types to its fleet, including the Airbus A220 and A330neo. It also revealed a rendered livery, which features light blue as the main colour.
Jakob Wert is an aviation journalist from Germany. He built up the website IFN.news and is the Editor-In-Chief of International Flight Network.
