Italy's struggling state airline Alitalia will start to use the first tranche of a €400 million bridge loan in January, a financial source said today.
"Alitalia will start using the loan at the start of January because its liquidity is low and it's heading into a period of seasonally low revenues for airlines," the source said.
The European Commission approved the emergency loan in July, which the airline said it needed to survive. The commission said at the time the loan had to be priced at market rates and be repaid within 12 months.
Chief Executive Mr Giancarlo Cimoli said last week the airline had not yet needed to make use of the loan thanks to unspecified financial operations.
Separately today, newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore said the EU Commission was due to open in January an investigation into possible state aid in Alitalia's rescue plan.