"The only way to save Alitalia is to free it from politics," Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said here on Tuesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference on low-cost airlines, O'Leary observed that "aside from Greece, only Italy still has an airline which hasn't been privatized".
"Alitalia should become a private company in order to increase business and lower costs," he added.
"It would be a shame to see Alitalia go down because it's a good airline. But whenever governmentS gets involved things just get worse," the Ryaniar chief said.
O'Leary has been an open critic of Alitalia management and what he sees as Rome's interference in running the airline.
In July 2005, he said that Alitalia's plan to hike its stock capital by 1.2 billion euros was "just a waste of money".
O'Leary predicted that the Italian carrier "will continue to lose money and there will be a recapitalization operation every two or three years."
Alitalia last week reported fresh losses of 65.8 million euros in the third quarter compared with a 15.7-million euro profit a year earlier.
The Italian carrier, which has not reported an annual profit since 2002, warned that total losses for the year would exceed its 2005 losses of more than 221 million euros.
The Ryanair chief also expressed his doubts that Air France or anyone else was interested in buying Alitalia.
"Before getting bought by anyone, what Alitalia needs to do is not fire personnel but carry more passengers," O'Leary said.
The main difference between Alitalia and Ryanair, O'Leary observed, was that "we don't waste time worrying about our rivals, we're too busy taking their passengers away from them by offering cheaper tickets.".
