Alitalia cancels 30 flights as it hurtles toward bankruptcy

ROME: Italian airline Alitalia on Friday cancelled 30 flights as it hurtled towards bankruptcy after a consortium dropped plans to save the flag-carrier as unions refused the lifeline over proposed layoffs.

"All the passengers will be put on other flights run by the company," a spokeswoman said, without specifying which airports would be effected.

She attributed the cancellations to "technical reasons." According to the Telenews channel, most of the flights were either departing or headed for Milan's Linate airport.

Many passengers opted to travel by train instead of other Alitalia flights, prompting the Italian rail company to run two additional trains between Rome and Milan, the ANSA news agency reported.

Union officials yesterday rejected a deal that would have cost thousands of jobs, leading the consortium of top names in Italian industry to withdraw the USD 1.4 billion takeover offer.

"Alitalia's crisis... and that of the international markets makes it impossible to extend the discussions which were very deep and led to numerous concessions," the consortium said in a statement.

Expressing "profound disillusionment," the Italian Airline Company (CAI) said "further concessions would inevitably have put the realisation of the plan at risk."

The failure was a blow to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who had made Alitalia's remaining in Italian hands a matter of political prestige.

"The situation is crucial, we could be on the edge of a precipice," Berlusconi told journalists after hearing the news.