ALITALIA, the hilarious national airline of Italy, is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. The Italian government has been trying to find a buyer for the airline for two years now, without any success. Now it looks almost certain to go under. Following the collapse of Swissair, and the Belgian Sabena, Alitalia’s situation makes one wonder why on earth any nation state wanted to own an airline in the first place. It just doesn’t seem like a very good idea at all.
My goodness, the suffering we’ve all gone through at the hands of nationalized airlines. Knowing that nothing they can do, or fail to do, is going to lead to any kind of consequences, the traveler is the direct target for their merry japes. In its state-owned days, the Spanish airline Iberia was notoriously unpleasant. A desk clerk employed by them once threw my passport at my face — not as a result of any kind of argument, but because she was bored and wanted to amuse her colleagues.
Olympic Airways tossed my luggage away somewhere between Athens, Cairo and Khartoum, and then tried to deny that it was any responsibility of theirs. A steward on a quiet flight on one of these airlines once attempted to importune me for sexual favors — actually, rather a frightening experience to someone in his early 20s.
Those were all dramatic low points, but everyone remembers the constant low-level atrociousness of the nationalized airlines — the rudeness, the dirt, the revolting food. Of course, the privatized airlines can deliver all of these in abundance. The point is that all too often the nationalized airlines delivered a shocking level of service while continuing to demand as high a price.
No wonder they’re all going bankrupt, and not a moment too soon. There goes Alitalia! Great! Remember to flush, please! Surely anybody can see that every airline that survives into private ownership is dramatically improved over time — Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and, leading the way decades ago, British Airways, all a thousand times better than wretched Alitalia and the like. The same is true outside Europe — India’s excellent Jet Airways is, to my mind, a hundred times better than Air India, or Kenya Airways.
