I was thinking on gambling a bit on this Alitalia share droping to 20centisimi...but can't understand why the boss warned it's gonna get worse?, in an Athens(!)olympics year? are there no tourists coming and departing or what? how's the streets in the tourist traps, busy? ciao a tutti.

Tourism is better than last year but that has no affect on Alitalia IMO. People fly into Italy using all different carriers unfortunatley for the company. I wouldn't buy even at that low price. As for the Olympics, those going to Greece aren't coming here as well.

Over here in San Gimignano it's as bad as it's ever been. All the shopkeepers are complaining, b & b's empty...
(AlItalia is due to go out of business I heard... but who knows really...)

Alitalia are going to drive themselves out of business because the employees seem to be refusing to make any concessions whatsoever - they think more like civil servants than airline employees, and have not adapted to the fact that they work in a cut-throat business.

At the msa time, I must say that most of the cuts re being planned on the very needed services like pilots and crew members, while very little cuts are planned (very much in italian style) on the little needed services that may easily be outsourced (and I loathe the concept of outsourcing, though I work as an outsourcer...) and that adopt a huge number of employees. For instance, almost no cuts are being planned on the HUGE Web Services structure, which has an estimated 90% of employees more than it would need.