Just ask yourself a question and give yourself an answer. Why would an airline, which has been operating in Italian skies for just two years, give up 85% of the money that the Sardinian Region wanted to “give” it to connect Cagliari with Rome and vice versa under a territorial continuity regime? Simple, it earns a lot even without that money and prefers to win hands down a tender conceived with one purpose only: to give money to state airlines. It doesn't take much to understand this: just look at the results of the latest “race” for territorial continuity to and from Sardinia to discover that even the latest tender launched by this Regional Council, like the one decided by the previous one, was not only a mess in terms of services, but a real gift in grand style to the monopolists of the skies.
Blackmail at a high price
Money allocated for an unwritten rule according to which territorial continuity must be paid dearly to airlines, preferably state-owned ones, which have always blackmailed Sardinia, Sardinians, tourists and the economy of an entire Island. For some time in Viale Trento, since the never-contested single rate for "residents" and "non-residents" was imprudently set aside in 2021, a logic of "crazy" economic compensations has been pursued in exchange for a terrible service, in terms of quality and quantity of services, with a perennial blackmail of airlines in the hot seasons, with tourists forced to pay the price to reach the Land of the Sea and the Nuraghi.
The mask falls
The latest tender on territorial continuity has finally brought down the mask in front of a tender specification written by who knows who, without any kind of objective verification of the real costs of the service. How else is it possible that Aeroitalia and Volotea themselves have alternated auction discounts between 85% and 77%? How can it be explained that on the Olbia-Rome route, Aeroitalia has even decided to give up 100% of the compensations, ousting Volotea that had proposed a discount of 80.01%? Simple: at the base of everything there is the clear, evident, irrefutable predisposition, moreover repeated, of a completely unfounded compensation forecast, the result of a system that has always attempted to give undue money to airlines. To understand that this is undue money, and therefore attempts at undue “gifts”, just read the rule that has governed the system of air territorial continuity for at least twenty years, or the imposition of the burden of public service on certain routes. This is the crucial step that systematically we try not only to ignore but also to evade with artifices that collapse when put to the test. What does “imposition of the burden of public service” mean? It means that on certain air routes relating to island or ultraperipheral regions, such as Sardinia, it is necessary to “protect” a universal service with actions that prevent monopolies and various speculations, linked to the blackmail of a connection without alternatives, from gaining the upper hand, thus undermining a sacrosanct right to mobility. The European Union has repeatedly stressed this concept, the last time in the “Interpretative Guidelines relating to Regulation (EC) No. 1008/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council - Public service obligations (2017/C 194/01)». The concept should be first-grade proof: «Compensation cannot exceed the amount necessary to cover the net costs incurred in providing the Public Service Obligation, taking into account the resulting revenues obtained by the air carrier and a reasonable profit margin». In practice, the European regulation says, airlines must be able to earn only a «reasonable profit margin», estimated over the years between 4% and 6%, to be added to the net and real cost of the hour flown. In short, the cost of the air ticket must be commensurate with the sum of the cost of staff, fuel, depreciation, handling, catering, insurance plus a reasonable profit. : To date, the ticket price imposed for residents covers, and abundantly, the "cost of the hour flown" and the "reasonable profit", but the free field that the Region's tender has left for "non-residents" remains. It is clear that not having imposed the "single tariff", as existed from 2013 to 2021, has opened an unprecedented speculative gap allowing companies to profit hand over fist in the seasonal periods most favorable for the big "cash". Also in this case, not only has Sardinia abdicated true territorial continuity, that is, quota prices that are the same for everyone, residents and non-residents, but it has not even imposed, as the law would have allowed, a maximum price for non-residents. Also in this case, both the previous and the current government should have made the "effort" to read the European law that states: "Public Service Obligations may provide for prescriptions relating to maximum tariffs, if it is deemed necessary, since otherwise the tariffs would be excessive with respect to the context of the economic needs of the region concerned. In specific cases, a Public Service Obligation could be envisaged that simply sets a maximum price. A strong increase in prices and a decrease in the number of passengers in a short time may, depending on the case, indicate the need to set a maximum price».
