ROME (AFP) - Alitalia, Italy's once-proud national flagship, sent up an SOS on Monday, publishing a final appeal on its website for investors to take over the deeply indebted company and its fractious unions.
The move came as the head of Italy's civil aviation authority ENAC said the near-bankrupt airline, which is 49.9 percent state-owned, could be grounded by Thursday if it did not come up with a "credible" cost-reduction plan.
"Between now and Thursday, the special administrator of Alitalia, Augusto Fantozzi, must present to ENAC a credible plan to avoid the suspension or the revocation of the licence to fly," Vito Riggio told reporters after meeting with Fantozzi.
Riggio had said earlier that Alitalia was "flying with a temporary licence," warning that the licence would be suspended "if a financial plan does not arrive within three or four days."
Fantozzi said for his part that if a "reasonable offer" emerges by September 30, "I will ask for a suspension of the licence, not a revocation, which would be more damaging."
Alitalia is haemorrhaging some three million euros a day, with a debt of around 1.2 billion euros (1.7 billion dollars).
On Alitalia's website, Fantozzi said he was seeking "whoever might be able to assure continuity of the transport service in the medium term ... to indicate interest in the acquisition of one or several branches of Alitalia."
Fantozzi, who was named by the government late last month to manage the failing company, set a deadline of noon (1000 GMT) on September 30.
Flights will be "guaranteed" until that date unless ENAC revokes the licence, he added.
Last week the Italian Air Company (CAI) consortium withdrew its one billion euro offer for Alitalia, reopening speculation over a possible foreign takeover.
Six of the airline's nine trade unions rejected a deal that would have led to 3,250 job losses.
CAI's withdrawal was an embarrassment for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who last month promised a "miracle" to save Alitalia from bankruptcy.
"We are working. We will perform another miracle and will offer Italy a profitable national company," the self-made billionaire told the weekly magazine Chi.
The airline has been surviving on a loan of 300 million euros made in late April from public funds after takeover talks with Air France-KLM collapsed -- also largely due to union resistance.
The European Commission is investigating whether the loan met EU bailout rules after expressing grave doubts.
Berlusconi had made the plight of Alitalia a campaign issue ahead of legislative polls in April, vowing that he would reject an Air France deal "out of hand" if elected in preference for a Made in Italy alternative.
On Sunday, Italian Transport Minister Altero Matteoli said that without a deal Alitalia flights could be grounded in less than a week.
He told the business daily Il Sole 24 Ore that Alitalia's licence could be withdrawn "in five or six days" and described CAI's offer as "the only option" to save the company.
Meanwhile, press reports said Israeli officials had seized Alitalia bank accounts and other assets in Israel, where the airline's debt amounts to some 350,000 euros.
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