Yesterday, the SDL union, who represents pilots, flight attendants, and ground workers, staged the first strike on the new Alitalia, only one week after the relaunch of the carrier. The strike lasted for 4 hours, beginning at 10am, and was called in order to protest the policies for hiring new workers at the new airline.

Last Tuesday, wild protests at the airports in Milan and Rome caused some cancellations and delays, but the strike that occurred yesterday was the first strike to be scheduled for the new life of the company. However, in comparison to the disruption of big walkouts on the airline during the past few months, the impact from the strike yesterday only modestly disrupted their flights.

Due to the strike, Alitalia only had to cancel 22 flights, which included 6 flights to the international destinations of Malta, Paris, Algiers, Istanbul, Cairo, and Moscow, according to the SDL union. Analysts are waiting to see if the relaunched Alitalia, with the weaker unions, will be able to avoid a labor strife, of which frustrated the airline’s predecessor, who tried to turn the company around and make a profit.

The relaunched Alitalia is a private airline owned by the Italian Air Company. This consortium of Italian investors has merged a lot of the old profitable assets of Alitalia with Air One, a much smaller carrier, while Air France KLM holds a minority share in the new airline. The relaunched company is also slimmer than it use to be, only having 148 planes from the combination of both carriers instead of the 173 of the old Alitalia, as well as only having about 12,500 staff, which is over 23,500 less between both companies.

Find out more about the airline at: www.alitalia.com