The flag carrier ITA Airways will bet more and more on intercontinental air connections and intermodality. Not ideas, but concrete projects with new investments to enhance train-plane integration. The management of the airline spoke about it yesterday, pending the completion of the negotiation between the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and Lufthansa, for the privatization of the Italian company.

"We are investing in Washington and San Francisco. At the end of the year we will open Rio de Janeiro and increase frequencies to Delhi, which is having great success, and we are focusing on Tokyo. If we could have found the planes, we would have done even more. The great opportunity that is also bringing benefits to medium and short-haul flights, which are working precisely because they find an outlet on long-haul flights", explained the airline's CEO, Fabio Lazzerini, interviewed at the end of the inauguration of the new area boarding at Rome-Fiumicino "Leonardo da Vinci" airport.

Lazzerini then spoke of the collaboration with the Ferrovie dello Stato Group on intermodality at Fiumicino: "It's just the first step of a much more elaborate train-to-aircraft integration project". A plan to be carried forward even at the cost of "closing some routes that today we maintain exclusively for connecting flights", such as the Florence-Rome which "if it was done efficiently, we would be willing to abandon".

On the matter see also the article published by AVIONEWS.