I have my entire family (14 people) booked on Alitalia through Orbitz for our wedding in Italy this September... I've been following the news and have been getting a bit anxious about the future of the airline.

Those of you flying in September -- what are your opinions as to what will happen, and do you know of any other reputable news sources besides AirWise to check for updates?

Thank you in advance.

ETA -- Please advise on contingency plans you may be formulating as well. Thank you!

This is not a straightforward "will it, won't it?" story.

Alitalia needs extra cash. Loans or subsidies from the Italian government are, in principle, illegal under EU rules. Whether these rules actually outlaw the proposals currently on the table is far from clear, and whether the Italian government wants to bail Alitalia out anyway is also far from clear.

Ultimately, though, Europe today is quite content to let airlines go bust, and very unhappy about subsidising airlines. For what it's worth, my guess is that there'll be some fudge that allows cash to come into Alitalia in return for forcing it to restructure (ie fire lots of people). At which point, Alitalia passengers are likely to find a lot of strikes hitting them.

Hard English-lsnguage information on this, if and when there is any, will be in the Financial Times and the BBC. Set a Google news alert on Alitalia at www.google.com/newsalerts. (You can access FT stories on the day they appear through Google News. After that day, you have to subscribe.)

By default Google news covers only English-languge stories, and the English-language media don't really cover the huge amount of shadow boxing that's going on about this between Italy's political parties, its unions, several different EU D-Gs, Europe's professionally managed airlines (like BA and Ryanair, all convinced this dinosaur should be put out of its misery), and Europe's other governments (who mostly agree with the professional airlines).

To follow all that, set an Italian Google news alert through www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=it

Sadly though, "authoritative" is a relative term in all this. If Corriere della Sera carries a story that the Italian minister of welfare is attacking the Alitalia bail-out, you can be sure he did indeed give such a speech. Understanding whether that tells you anything about what's actually going to happen usually requires a PhD in Italian politics.

Flanner - thanks for all the good info. I'm planning a trip to Italy in October and was concerned myself (haven't yet made flight arrangements). Now I can keep updated and have some understanding of how it all works. EU really has changed things, hasn't it? Or has it?

Flanner, thank you so much!

topping

The Italian Government recently installed a new top manager for Alitalia who had previously been the "turnaround man" for Italian State Railways. If he can "turn around" Alitalia as he did the railways, the airline might actually have a chance at survival. At this point, I'd speculate that the odds of long-turn survival are no better than 50/50, although the situation is very fluid (as it is for some U.S. major carriers). I would not worry for September, however, as the summer months for Alitalia are terrific for transatlantic travel (vey high seat occupancy levels). I'd worry more about the effects of an attack against the airline industry.