Alitalia - Società Aerea Italiana S.p.A., operating as Alitalia, was an Italian airline which was once the flag carrier and largest airline of Italy. The company had its head office in Fiumicino, in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital. The airline was owned by the Government of Italy as a nationalized business from its founding in 1946 until it was privatized in 2009. However, it struggled with profitability whilst operating as a private company, including failed negotiations to sell to other private parties. The airline entered extraordinary administration in 2017 following many years of financial losses. The Italian government eventually took back ownership of the airline in March 2020.
Alitalia Savoia-Marchetti SM.95 at Manchester in 1948
Alitalia Douglas DC-8 at Heathrow Airport in August 1960
President George W. Bush walks the red carpet with Pope Benedict XVI. (2008)
Alitalia McDonnell Douglas DC-9 in the 1957 livery
The Airbus A320 family is a series of narrow-body airliners developed and produced by Airbus.
The A320 was launched in March 1984, first flew on 22 February 1987, and was introduced in April 1988 by Air France.
The first member of the family was followed by the longer A321, the shorter A319, and the even shorter A318 .
Final assembly takes place in Toulouse in France; Hamburg in Germany; Tianjin in China since 2009; and Mobile, Alabama in the United States since April 2016.
Airbus A320 family
The Joint European Transport JET2-100 concept
The A320 first prototype (retrofitted with IAE V2500-A1 engines) at the 1988 Farnborough Airshow
The first A320 was delivered to Air France on 28 March 1988; the early A320-100s had no wingtip fences.