Because I soon will have to fly, and the anticipation makes me quite nervous, it's probably not a coincidence that a post about Alitalia attracted my attention today.
It is known how Alitalia, the italian national airline company, will probably be privatized, due to its irreparable losses in the millions, bad management, waste of public money and atrocious inefficiency. Not even going into organizing rendition flights to take supposed terrorists to be tortured around the world.
Many in Italy grumble against this probable destiny, and they seem to imply that it isn't patriotic to get rid of our national airline company like that. They suggest, and many politicians among them, that the State should throw more money into the bottomless well to resuscitate the corpse (sorry for the double metaphor), because "Alitalia is a national treasure", "property of the people", etcetera.
Theoretically one could agree that it is never a good deal for the citizens to sell out public property, but the thing is the Italian State isn't capable to manage Alitalia. So I don't really know. It's essentially a problem of political feuds and clientele, which makes it ineradicable. Therefore the question seems to be either you sell at one price now, or you sell at a much lower price later.
Well I don't care much anyway, but I read a post today, and just in case you have any lingering doubts on what the right destiny for Alitalia should be, and like me you don't fly much so you don't know by your own experience, check out Alitalia as a ruler of my destiny, by Ms. Adventure in Italy.
I insist that nothing is more helpful to understand your own country than the impressions of the expat.

It’s a guy named Luigi (yes, Luigi) with an Alitalia lanyard around his neck, sitting in front of a display for Air Uzbekistan (no joke). (...) Luigi, our Alitalia representative, well, let’s just say that he is consistent with the level of Alitalia quality I’m used to. Which is, crap. He fuffs about looking for another flight before finally telling us we’ll be getting on the Virgin flight at 11.30. He takes a few moments to tell us about the amenities Virgin customers receive and a moment’s pause would have begged the question “Why is one airline’s customer service representative touting another airline?” but then again, this is Alitalia. (...)
10.30 Back in Terminal 2. “Luigi, we missed you.” Cretino, I feel like yelling. “How is it that no one made our reservation or even called them to tell them to hold the flight for us?”
“Oh.” Luigi picks up the phone to call his “supervisor” but he could be talking to a dial-tone for all we know. Pass the buck, m’amico.
Luigi glosses over the fact of what happened, and again recounts the luxuries that we missed by missing the Virgin flight. “What a shame that you missed it.” My fingers are itching, for his neck. “There’s a limo for first-class passengers, and if you’re really in a hurry, they use a motorcycle. It’s so cool!”

Details of rudeness and inefficiency in this story are comic and shameful. The smell of nepotism (incompetent people hired to badly do a job because they're connected) is all over the place.
The overall picture, quite depressing: because at the slightest snag (the obvious strike), Alitalia rates probably as the worst company to ever fly with.