The Economist is, as could be expected, pretty harsh with the Alitalia situation:

On a wing and a taxpayer’s prayer

An aspect of the story that has continued to develop in recent days, is that the governor of the Lazio region, and now the president of the province of Milan have both expressed interest in investing some of their respective regions’ money in the new airline, in order to have some control over the airline’s decisions with regards to the airports in their administrative areas, Rome’s Fiumicino, and Milan’s Linate. This would be sort of like the governer of Georgia expressing a desire to invest his state’s money in Delta, which has a large hub in Atlanta. So far, it looks like that may be a step too far for even the grubby politics in Italy, but who knows. To turn a phrase, with the Alitalia deal, the sky’s the limit.