With time running out to save Alitalia from liquidation, Augusto Fantozzi, the special commissioner in charge of the stricken carrier, has told The Times that he is counting on Italian “flexibility” to help him to pull off a last-minute rescue. “This is a delicate moment for the country,” he said. “Alitalia is a national symbol.”

However, he said he hoped that either the trade unions would change their minds and accept an offer from an Italian consortium that they had rejected last week, or that alternative “serious and significant” offers would emerge.

The airline has debts in excess of €1 billion (£792 million), loses €2 million a day and has not made a profit since 1999. Enac, the Italian civil aviation authority, has set tomorrow as the deadline for Professor Fantozzi to present a realistic financial plan to keep it flying. If he fails to do so, it will suspend Alitalia's licence, with 20,000 jobs lost. Professor Fantozzi has set his own deadline of next Tuesday, saying that if he is unable to save Alitalia by then, he will suspend its licence himself and initiate liquidation proceedings. The two deadlines are not incompatible: Enac is likely to take several days to study the report Professor Fantozzi submits to it tomorrow.

The professor is unfazed: “Italy is a country in which the race is won or lost in the last hundred metres.”

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