Ciao, Alitalia: How Will The Pope Fly After His Favorite Airline Goes Bust?

(ANALYSIS) I have many fond memories of family trips to Italy that took place each summer during my childhood. Those summer pilgrimages to visit family and friends included connecting with the place of my parents’ birth as well as seeing some of the country’s storied sites.

Visiting Vatican City for the first time in 1990, when I was 14, remains one of the best memories. I would visit there again numerous times — including as a news reporter — in the decades that ensued.

Those New York City-Rome trips involved flying with Alitalia, Italy’s national carrier. The airline — known for its near-impeccable safety record and sometimes-appalling customer service — will officially shut down on Oct. 15. The announcement, made this past summer, marks the end of an era for an airline founded in 1946. It also marks the end of an era for my family, which was loyal to the brand to a fault.

The airline’s demise and the start of a new one named ITA is a business story with a religion angle that too many news organizations have ignored over the past few weeks. There was plenty of coverage regarding Alitalia’s purchase of new planes, potential layoffs and Italian government subsidies that kept the airline afloat for decades.

That religion angle? You see, my family and I weren’t the only loyal Alitalia customers over the years. The most famous has been the pope. It was in 1964, when Pope Paul VI traveled to Israel, when Alitalia became the pontiff’s official airline.

Pope Francis prepares to walk off an Alitalia plane upon arrival at the Monte Real Air Base in Portugal in May 2017. Photo via Vatican TV/YouTube.

Alitalia put on plenty of miles under the papacy of former Pope John Paul II, now a saint, who visited 129 countries during his 27 years as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The plane used by the pope — known in the press as Shepherd One as a way to compare it to the U.S. president’s Air Force One — continued to be used by former Pope Benedict XVI and now Pope Francis. It’s also aboard these flights that the pope holds a news conference and always makes news.

Alitalia and the papacy will forever be intertwined. Over the years, there has been some very good journalism done around how the pope travels and the comforts afforded to him by the Italian airline. One of the best articles on the subject was done by Reuters’ longtime Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella in 2019.

Here’s just a flavor of what he wrote to show readers what happens behind the curtain when a journalist routinely covers the pope:

Having done nearly 140 trips with three popes since 1982, I took it in my sleepy stride and started writing the day’s first story on the bus to the airport.

There is no dedicated “Vatican One” papal plane. The 82-year-old leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics uses chartered flights and most of the time press and pope fly together.

Back in the 1980s, we bashed away on our typewriters and puffed away on our cigarettes. When we flew Alitalia, the crew used to give us 10 packs each.

Today, the plane is smoke-free and there is no clickety clack. The VAMPS – the Vatican Accredited Media Personnel, who wear that acronym in large letters on accreditation badges around our necks – take the back.

A quick look around Google — where many journalists start their initial research into a subject — and I stumbled upon a story posted in 2019 by The Points Guy, one of many blogs and websites dedicated to the travel industry.

This post did a wonderful job giving readers historical background and showing just how Alitalia operates these papal flights:

Contrary to other governments, which own aircraft that shuttle heads of state around, the Vatican doesn’t own a jet that can fly long distances. Since Pope Paul VI, Italian flag carrier Alitalia has been tasked with ferrying the pope on his missions out of Rome (more later on how he gets back.)

These Alitalia flights carrying the Pope all get a special flight number, AZ4000. Sometimes it also gets the call sign Shepherd One, for example when Francis visited the United States in 2015.

Flight numbers 4000 and above are reserved for special, non-scheduled Alitalia flights. For example, when the 777-200ER that had flown Francis to Abu Dhabi returned to Rome empty, it bore the flight number AZ8033.

When flying longer distances, Alitalia assigns its widebody jets to the Papal mission, either the A330-200 or the 777. Upon landing, pilots open the cockpit windows and display the flag of the country being visited, alongside the Vatican’s standard.

On shorter hops, the Pope flies on an Alitalia single-aisle Airbus jet, like the A320 or A321. And to navigate even smaller distances, the Pope travels in a helicopter operated by the Italian Air Force, most frequently an Agusta Westland AW139 also used by Italian government officials.

In 2014, Alitalia put out a press release celebrating the airline’s 50-year collaboration with the Holy See. The exhibit at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport featured photographs from Alitalia’s archives as well as those of L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper.

Travel blogs weren’t shy about making the connection between Alitalia and the papacy, something many mainstream news organizations ignored in their business coverage. Travel Pulse was on the story and made the connection between the bankruptcy and its history with the papacy.

Missing from much of the news coverage surrounding Alitalia’s bankruptcy were references to the pope and what he will do next. I spent much of August reading the U.S. press coverage about Alitalia and being frustrated at the absence of any context regarding how Pope Francis will travel after this month. It’s pretty bad when you get scooped by a bunch of travel blogs.

Crux, which rarely disappoints, addressed the matter in an Aug. 24 post under the headline, “This fall, papal travel will change with closure of pope’s favorite airline.” Crux, however, isn’t a secular news website. It specializes in Catholic news and covers the Vatican as well as the church in the U.S. and around the world. it’s no surprise that it would cover the Alitalia story with an eye on the pope. This is how the piece ends:

As of as of Oct. 15, 2021, ITA flights will be available for purchase, bringing new management and a new logo, as well as a new sense of corporate hope after Alitalia’s years-long struggle for survival, costing the Italian government some 7.4 billion euros between 1974-2014.

ITA will initially start smaller than Alitalia, dropping to just 60 aircraft instead of 92, and only 5,000 employees instead of 11,000. However, it’s projected that several thousand more former Alitalia workers could be hired by ITA in 2022, depending on how business goes.

The Vatican has not responded to a Crux request for comment on whether the pope plans to travel with ITA in the future, including his upcoming November visit to Glasgow for the COP26 UN climate summit.

Even a business story can have a religion angle. Alitalia’s demise is a very good example of this. The Vatican will, at some point, have to make an announcement regarding the pope’s future plans and what airline he will take. Alitalia has a very special place in my heart. The papacy is also a very important part of Alitalia’s history.

This post was originally published at GetReligion.

Clemente Lisi is a senior editor and regular contributor to Religion Unplugged. He is the former deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.