Air transport chaos, Salvini "following closely". Renzi: "He's incompetent or a jinx"

ROME – Amid the full-blown chaos over air travel, Matteo Salvini makes a move. A note from the Ministry of Transport explains that it "is following with the utmost attention the slowdowns affecting national air traffic". The ministry "has been in contact with Enav since the early hours of the morning to look into the technical causes of the anomalies found in the data transmission network and the resulting operational limitations". "The minister continues to closely monitor how the situation evolves, with particular attention to the safety of operations, the need to contain the inconvenience for passengers, and the goal of a rapid return to full operability". Matteo Salvini, Minister of Transport "What went wrong" Matteo Renzi, leader of Italia Viva, criticizes the minister head-on: "After what I said on Floris's show, Salvini attacked me. And by the harsh law of karma, that same day I found myself on a Rome-Florence train running 105 minutes late. You'll say: oh well, poor guy, it's not his fault. He doesn't have to run the trains himself. And in fact today it's air transport that's in meltdown. Let's put it this way: either he's incompetent or he brings bad luck. Everyone can pick the answer they prefer. One rule only: forbidden to answer 'both'". The Democratic Party wants the Minister of Transport to report to Parliament. Senator Antonio Misiani says: "Since last night, Italian air traffic has been practically on its knees. Airspace management capacity reduced by about 50%". "Thousands of passengers, workers and businesses are paying the price of an extremely serious situation, unacceptable in a G7 country. It is not enough for us to know that this was not a hacker attack or sabotage. In fact, this aspect is even more worrying: it means that the data transmission network supporting the entire national air traffic control system failed on its own". Antonio Misiani of the Democratic Party The company's top management "A strategic infrastructure, on which flight safety rests, cannot go into crisis over a technical anomaly and remain out of service for hours, with contingency systems holding up only until dawn. We demand immediate answers about what is happening. What really happened? Why did the redundancy fail? How long will the disruption last? What investments have been made, and which postponed, on the maintenance and upgrading of the networks? Who will compensate passengers, and how will workers in the sector be protected?". "For this reason we are asking that Enav's top management and the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini come to report to Parliament as soon as possible". Anthony Barbagallo, leader of the Democratic Party group on the Transport Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, announces that he will submit an urgent question: "Where is Salvini? In recent years the minister seems to have been distracted for far too long from the sector's structural problems. Now the knots are coming undone. Reassurances are not enough: we need clear answers and transparency about what is happening".