The "Damnatio memoriae" is consummated. Even the effigy of the latest Air Italy sign is razed to the ground. The violent cancellation of every sign of the past, here, in what remains of the business center that once belonged to Alisarda, then Meridiana and finally Air Italy, in the Costa Smeralda airport in Olbia, has completed its epilogue in the silence of the last gesture . The epitaph is carved with the holes left impressed on that facade where once stood the cubital inscription of the company of the Aga Khan. Now there is nothing left. All razed to the ground as if the design of the skies had a single goal: to eliminate any possible competition from the scene. The plan of the monopoly of air is complete: Sardinia, now more than ever, has reached the absolute bottom of isolation, the one destined to perpetually "seize" the land of the Sardinians. An inexorable plan, fully accomplished, thanks to the silences, the connivance, of Rome, Olbia and Cagliari, strategic and cursed convergences between emirs, politics and business.

Disposable earth

There is nothing left. Olbia airport, managed for some time by the powerful Italian and foreign finance lobbies, with the silence of politics, is empty. It is 32 degrees in the hall of terminal 1, but no one lands here and no one leaves. The slimming "cure", even in this strip of apparent wealth, has had its effect: rich earnings for 50 days in the summer, the silence of the engines for the rest of the year. A sort of disposable land, where business is consumed only and exclusively on the head of Sardinia. The skies of the island now fly only military aircraft, far and wide, everywhere, including those that break into the skies above the "Costa Smeralda" in the middle of the morning. For the rest, that runway stretched to the size of Qatar is a desolate field, with empty hangars like never before. All disappeared, but above all they disappeared, the "ghost" workers who, from the Alisarda born and created by the Prince to the collapse of Air Italy, were the protagonists of an extraordinary epic of the air, but also and above all the unfortunate victims of management foolish and reckless, of monopoly and suicidal strategies. At the last farewell, that of the liquidation of Air Italy, 1500 showed up, there were many pilots, flight and ground attendants with the emblem of the Sardinian company.

Children of a lesser God

Their story, however, unlike many other similar ones, see that of the end of Alitalia, much more funded by the friendly State, ended with an epilogue that leaves its mark, profound and indelible: the awareness of being children of a God minor or perhaps worse: nobody's children. Of those workers, with a lot of professionalism consolidated in the skies and in the engines of the Airbus, nothing is known. Ghosts, hidden and forgotten by everyone, from those who made proclamations, from regional companies to those who planned to merge into an enlarged state company. Nothing, everything has dissolved, like snow in the Sardinian October sun.

Apartheid in the skies

Yet in the silences of the skies of Sardinia, with the full and total complicity of governments, one of the most serious acts of this ugly story is taking place. There would be many possible definitions, but the one that is most suitable is that of a real "apartheid" of the skies. Nobody mentions it. The blackmail touches the dignity, it corrodes the hope of not eternally remaining an ex of Meridiana or a fu of Air Italy. The reality, however, is marked by documents, numbers and behaviors that leave a profound mark. When the European Union gave the green light to the new state company, Ita, in place of Alitalia, it had set the limits of aid and rules. One of these was the discontinuity between the two companies: no tricks, he invoked Brussels.

The aerial betrayal

The diktat was peremptory enough to give hope for the Sardinian workers of Air Italy. The European Commission seemed resolute: Alitalia failed, Ita cannot be the phoenix with which the state company rises from its ashes. One of the clauses put in black and white by the community offices concerned the staff of the new company: they must necessarily be found on the market, without any kind of privilege. The reality, what we are about to tell you, however, is quite different.

Ecatombe Air Italy

Air Italy workers, starting from 550 Sardinians out of a total of 1500, have become ghosts in all respects. The data leaked under the table are a real massacre: Ita has hired on a fixed-term basis, without any recognition of seniority, just 15, three are Sardinian, out of 3,600. A slap in the face to the commitments signed in the State tables, a discrimination handled at the table in the Rome offices, with the Italian trade unions all in the hands of Alitalia employees. A real discrimination against those Sardinian workers, the most affected, who were waiting for a sign of "seriousness" and commitment from the governments and the Region itself. Not only were all the clauses imposed by the European Commission violated, from the discontinuity of Ita by Alitalia to the recruitment of personnel on the market, but a further very serious injury to the detriment of Air Italy workers was implemented.

Flying corporal

Silence also reigns supreme in this case, but the authoritative sources reveal: contracts have been applied to the former employees of Meridiana-Air Italy, we publish an excerpt, which provide for fixed-term hires, in practice seasonal, without any recognition of seniority and above all with figures from a real capolarate of the skies. The table applied to the 15 “miraculous” workers of Air Italy provides for a base salary of 548 euros and “well” 7 euros and 28 cents per hour flown. To these must be added 191 euros of guaranteed flight allowance. Figures that clash with those applied to other Ita workers, most of whom would have been granted full length of service with Alitalia. The seven euros per hour, for a job suspended at 9,000 meters above sea level, are a slap in the face not only to workers like the others, but they constitute a discrimination on which the silence that has fallen on the matter cannot stand for long. All this shows that the workers of the former Sardinian company, made to succumb by the palace games and by the casual Arab-Italian management, has catalyzed a real action aimed at eliminating them from any scenario, precisely in order not to disturb the games on the skies of State.

Disaster at the table

The plane crash that Sardinia is experiencing is not only the son of decision-making inability at various levels, but it is also the goal pursued at the table to squeeze the island in an unprecedented monopoly grip. Having made the Air Italy project fail had only one goal: to allow Ita to get its hands on air transport again. Volotea, the Spanish low-cost company that had tried to insinuate itself into Sardinian air transport, is now also recording this game. It is no coincidence that the Spanish Asturias company announced, at the same time as Ita, the renunciation of the Sardinian routes, to force the Region to re-launch the tender, canceling the single rate forever and obtaining an avalanche of money that the facts have shown to be totally unjustified. A very delicate game that is being played on a tightrope since the precedents on the affair are very serious. The tender prepared by the Region, the one that had caused Sardinia to lose the single tariff, had been drawn up with the advice of a law firm which then, scandalously, had taken on the defense of Ita at the Tar Sardinia against the award to Volotea.

A table top

A combination that is confirmed with the umpteenth announced tender without a single tariff, as Alitalia has always demanded first and now Ita. Instead of pursuing solutions for the protection of the territorial continuity service, it was preferred, both in Rome and Cagliari, to be dictated by the airlines. The vaunted in-house management of the territorial continuity air service turned out to be a false promise. To dictate times and rules are the masters of the skies, despite the friendly government just installed. The recognition of the island principle fails at the first step, the concrete one of air transport. Air Italy workers, men and women with great experience, are forever destined to remain ghosts. The "Damnatio memoriae", that of business in the Sardinian skies, comes first.

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