"Sorry, no results on this date." The flight search engine is a broken record in the skies of Sardinia. Needless to insist. Whether it's summer or winter, traveling to this land isolated from the sea is a utopia. Abuses are the order of the day, the "kidnapping" of an entire population is a crime without punishment. For some it is even forbidden to complain. The diktat of the palaces is silence, in the face of the disaster that takes place day after day in the skies of the island. Try today, July 17, 2023, to go to Milan for an emergency, health or work. The last chance was for this morning at 6.25. Departure from Cagliari airport. The only seat available operated by Ita Airways, the monopolist of South Sardinia, the former Alitalia, cross and debts of Italian skies.
Like Honolulu
To get to Milan, however, that last passenger had to settle for a flight of "just" 6 and 40 hours, forced to make an additional stopover, as if he were arriving in Honolulu. It didn't go any better for the fare: the ticket office issued him a salary of 917.38 euros, unless he chose the flex fare, in which case the ticket reached the "modest" figure of 967.38 euros. At the same time, the national airline's website issued a ticket from Milan to the John Fitzgerald Kennedy in New York for just 509.67 euros. To go and see the Statue of Liberty, one stopover, like for the Cagliari-Milan, with just 11 hours of flight, compared to the six hours and 40 scheduled for the Sardinian-Lombard crossing. Things aren't better for the other corridor, the one towards Rome. Yesterday evening those who wanted to return from the capital to Cagliari were forced to travel with a stopover of 3 hours and 45 minutes for the modest sum of 704.19 euros. In the monopoly ATMs, those used for booking and issuing tickets, there are no margins: seats are sold out, load factor, or rather the coefficient of filling, at 100%. The logic is entirely commercial, studied at the table and fully embraced by institutions dominated by airlines: it is better to leave passengers on the ground than to have an empty seat on the plane.
Without the rule of law
All this in an insular Region, with no alternatives to the fifteen hours by ship or plane flight. And the airlines are well aware of this, those that share, with the complicity of many, the monopoly of the Sardinian skies at a very high price. If we were in a "rule of law" all this would be stopped without the slightest hesitation, prosecuted with blows of the penal code. In reality here, in this land which has become an island by divine choice and by constitutional law, there are no laws, there is not the slightest respect for the very concept underlying the «territorial continuity», a law passed by the European Parliament already in the 1990s. It was Europe, that of "non-discrimination", that approved a regulation which imposed protection for mobility to and from the Islands, which have always been subject to island speculation, Sardinia more than others.
Imposed obligation
The provision of Brussels was clear, without subterfuge: "Imposition of the public service obligation". In this normative expression armored in the Community "sacred texts" there are two fundamental passages: "public service" and "imposition of the burden". Two key elements that still today we try to elude in every way, with calls for tenders functional to speculation, and cleverness of high class. The first element that escapes is "the public service". Flying to move from an island, or to reach it, is not a pleasure, it is not a favour. The right to mobility cannot be subjected to the logic of pseudo discounts, preferential rates or other similar propaganda gimmicks. Public service is a non-negotiable, non-discretionary right. We are not dealing with "subsidized tariffs", but rather fair and rebalancing tariffs, to protect a public service.
Highway of the Sun
The concept can be summarized with a question: can a quota of cars be imposed on the Autostrada del Sole which connects northern and central Italy? Is it conceivable that every motorist traveling along that fundamental artery would be asked for residence before entering Milan or Rome? And is it conceivable that the citizen of Milan who goes to the Colosseum pays ten times the price of the motorway toll compared to the one who goes from Rome to the Duomo? In Sardinia these concepts of public service are violated every day, without there being the slightest action to remove abuses and abuses against an isolated island. Public service means that there can't be a few flights, all packed, with frequencies that are in themselves a perennial violation of public service. In connection time slots, throughout the day, there are "gaps" of up to eight hours without a single connection with Milan or Rome and vice versa. It would be enough to compare these frequencies with the past, with many more flights and seats available, to understand that we are faced with a clear violation of the "public service".
Service interruption
On the contrary, with a more careful analysis, the interruption of the public service could also be configured, punishable by law, if it were ascertained, a not impossible undertaking, that that limited number of flights is functional only to the pursuit of an objective: to fully earn hands the airlines to the detriment of the public interest. The second concept of the Community law is even more stringent: imposition of the burden of public service. It is an "obligation" to perform a service under certain conditions.
No speculation
Among these there is one marked without too many preambles relating to a very clear economic concept: there is no speculation on the cost of tickets. The Community rule is also very clear with respect to compensation, i.e. the money that is given, most of the time improperly and sometimes in an oversized way, to airlines to guarantee the service. The provision reads: "this compensation may not exceed the amount necessary to cover the net costs incurred in discharging the public service obligation, taking into account the resulting revenues obtained by the air carrier and a reasonable profit margin". In practice the rule says: the cost of the ticket for connections with regions subject to a public service obligation must be a sum between the real costs of fuel, depreciation of the plane, personnel, insurance, catering and a "reasonable profit margin" that the European Union has always considered between 4 and 6%. Therefore, on an island whoever agrees to carry out that service by participating in a tender must not speculate, but earn a well-defined profit.
Calls convicts & vulnus
Is it all the companies fault? No. The theme is the calls for tenders, the service clauses indicated in the specifications, very often real gifts for the airlines. With guilty steps backwards, consumed without a fight, such as the cancellation of the "single tariff", in force for almost ten years, which made Sardinia accessible under "fair and rebalancing" conditions, both for "resident" and "non-resident" citizens ”. The unloading of the barrel towards the European palaces is useless. In fact, one fact is certain: the single tariff has never been challenged or contested. As such it had to be reiterated and expanded throughout the year and not just for nine months, as envisaged by a clear state law in 2017. The reality is that the devastating modification of "territorial continuity" has an even more serious vulnerability: the Region to negotiate with Europe and rewrite the tender notice in 2020 had commissioned a continental law firm. Too bad, however, it was the same pool of lawyers who defended Ita, the former Alitalia, at the Sardinia Tar.
Urgent decree
Now, however, the disaster of territorial continuity requires emergency and urgent solutions. It is not necessary to resort to the penal code to classify what is happening in Sardinia as an interruption of an essential public service. The competent ministers, from that of Infrastructure and Transport to the President of the Council himself, have emergency duties and powers to stop this kidnapping of Sardinians and Sardinia. It is not enough to take note of it, it is necessary to act, without hesitation. Last annotation. The single tariff is in fact the Sardinian model of territorial continuity, blocked for no credible reason. Today, to make it even more valid, both in Rome and in Brussels, there is even a constitutional provision to guarantee the island's rebalancing. Botched solutions would help exacerbate the disaster. The Italian Government and the Sardinian Region, if they had the fate of "cohesion" at heart, which is also a constitutional provision, would have only one duty: to fight to cancel the nefarious "passport" of the residence, a real wall to enter and leave from Sardinia.