After seeing its offer to invest some $1 billion in Malpensa airport snubbed by the company which manages the Milan runway, SEA, Irish low-cost airline Ryanair on Wednesday said it was not interested in slots abandoned at Malpensa by Italian national carrier Alitalia.
''We made a $1-billion offer for Malpensa but SEA said it wasn't interested. Now those slots are no longer of any interest to us,'' said Ryanair's director for marketing in Italy, Alessia Viviani.
Ryanair, she added, also ''doesn't care'' what happens to Alitalia, whether it is sold to Air France-KLM or domestic carrier Air One.
The only thing the Irish budget airline is interested in is that the privatization does not hurt competition by creating a monopoly on Milan-Rome flights, in the event Air One buys Alitalia, Viviani said.
Now that the option of expanding at Malpensa has been shelved, Viviani said Ryanair will go ahead with its previous plan to expand service at Orio al Serio airport in nearby Bergamo.
''This is an important airport for us and we will continue to grow here,'' she said.
Ryanair's offer for Malpensa was made last September and would have allowed the budget airline to add 80 routes from the two Milan area airports and involved the acquisition of 18 new B737 aircraft by 2012.
In exchange for investing in Malpensa, Ryanair wanted SEA to provide ''greater efficiency and lower prices'', a spokesman for Europe's most successful low-cost airline said at the time.
Alitalia has more than halved its flights to and from Malpensa for the upcoming summer season in order to reduce its losses there, said to be some 200 million euros a year.
SEA responded by filing a suit against the national carrier seeking 1.25 billion euros in damages for allegedly breaching their partnership agreement to make Malpensa Italy's second air transport hub, after Rome.
When Ryanair announced its offer for the Milan airport, an airline spokesman said Malpensa ''has never achieved its full potential because it has always bet on the wrong horse: Alitalia''.
In related developments, outgoing Premier Romano Prodi confirmed on Wednesday that exclusive negotiations will continue as planned between Alitalia and Air France-KLM for the Treasury's 49.9% controlling stake in the national carrier.
''We will certainly do everything possible to complete the privatization. This operation is something which until now no one has had the courage to deal with and which had become both necessary and indispensable,'' Prodi said.
Prodi's center-left government, in its caretaker capacity, has until April, when early elections will be held, to complete Alitalia's privatization.
Doubts over whether negotiations between Alitalia and Air France-KLM would continue recently arose after AP Holding, Air One's parent company, filed a suit in a regional administrative court against the government's decision to allow the exclusive talks.
A ruling is expected on February 20.
The sale of Alitalia was also complicated by the downfall of Prodi's government and the prospect of a return to power of the center-right, which has been critical of the Alitalia operation.
Prodi's government decided at the end of 2006 to sell most if not all of the Treasury's 49.9% stake in Alitalia.
After an attempt to auction the stake failed last summer, it was decided that Alitalia management would negotiate the direct sale of the Treasury's stake, with the government having the final word on the deal.
Alitalia's board on December 21 unanimously chose Air France-KLM over AP Holding, the two remaining bidders, because it said it offered the best guarantees for the national carrier's future.
Merger talks officially opened in mid-January and are set to conclude by mid-March.
