Bad news day for airlines - at least for Alitalia, BA and Aloha

Reading the travel pages looks like a bad day to be in the airline business:

1. Milan Malpensa - the "greatest airport in Italy" is having its flight numbers butchered. The newly Air-France/KLM owned Alitalia is going to eliminate two-thirds of its flights from this airport. Effectively ending Malpensa's days as an international hub (SMH article here). By sheer Italian co-incidence the must heralded new link between Malpensa to the Milan-Turin Highway was finally opened yesterday (day before this announcement) after years of delay;

2. BA is still up to their necks in baggage at Terminal 5 (SMH article here). Some 15,000 items nowhere near their owners and without enough staff to help. Kevin has more coverage of US$8.6billion in problem here; and

3. Goodbye to Aloha Airlines that shuts (not unexpectedly) tomorrow (SMH again). Home page of Aloha says it all.

thanks to sluggerwv on flickr for the photo