Meridiana

If you flew to Sardinia in summer in the 1990s or 2000s, or stood at the fence at Milan Linate, you know them: the slender MD-82s with the “meridiana” title. The airline from Olbia was the island’s carrier for over half a century – first as Alisarda, then as Meridiana, finally as Air Italy. Today no aircraft flies under this name anymore. On this page you learn how an air taxi operation on the Costa Smeralda became a scheduled airline, which aircraft it flew, how to recognize Meridiana in old photos and why the name disappeared in 2018.

Meridiana at a glance

Meridiana was a private Italian airline based in Olbia on Sardinia. It was founded on March 29, 1963 under the name Alisarda – a name in which you can read “ali” (wings) and Sardinia. Behind the project was Karim Aga Khan IV, who at the time was developing the Costa Smeralda in the northeast of the island into an exclusive vacation region. Guests, investors and staff needed a fast connection to the mainland – and that is exactly what the airline was created for.

Over the years, the small air taxi operation became a scheduled and charter airline with a dense domestic network. The connections from Sardinia to Milan and Rome remained the backbone, joined by routes between the big cities of the mainland, to Sicily and to many European countries. In 1991 the company took the name Meridiana, which lasted until 2018.

For spotters, Meridiana is above all an MD-80 airline. For more than three decades, the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 was the fleet’s workhorse. In the final years, Boeing 737s and 767s took over, before the airline became Air Italy after the entry of Qatar Airways.

The history in stages

The first flights were anything but glamorous. In April 1964, Alisarda started with two eight-seat Beechcraft C-45s from the old Olbia-Venafiorita airfield. Two years later came the first turboprops, the 26-seat Nord 262, and with them scheduled service began: first to Rome, and in May 1966 also to Milan Linate.

The most important step of the early years was the new airport. With Olbia-Costa Smeralda, Alisarda got a runway in 1974 on which jets could also land, and promptly switched to the Douglas DC-9. In 1978 the airline took over the Cagliari–Milan Linate route and thus had a strong presence in the south of the island for the first time. In the same period, seasonal flights abroad were added, for example to Zurich, Geneva, Frankfurt and Paris.

Why the name “Meridiana”?

By the end of the 1980s, Alisarda was long since flying more than just to and from Sardinia. The network included destinations such as Bologna, Genoa, Naples, Pisa and Verona, plus seasonal routes to Germany, Switzerland and France. The name of an island airline no longer fit. In May 1991, the shareholders therefore decided on the renaming to Meridiana – Italian for “sundial.” In the same year, the airline set up new bases in Florence-Peretola and Verona and opened connections to Sicily from Florence.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code IG: appeared in flight numbers, on tickets and on departure boards. Alisarda already flew with IG.
• ICAO code ISS: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Registration: The fleet was mostly registered in Italy, so the registrations begin with I-.

One peculiarity matters for your logbook: the codes outlived the name. Air Italy continued from March 1, 2018 with IG flight numbers and the ICAO code ISS. A flight plan entry with ISS therefore only tells you, together with the date, whether the aircraft was flying as Meridiana or as Air Italy. For the callsign, the sources give differing information – better to rely on code and date here.

The fleet through the decades

Hardly any Italian airline flew as many different types as Alisarda and Meridiana – from twin-engine piston aircraft to the Boeing 767. The jets came mainly from McDonnell Douglas, later from Airbus and Boeing.

Type	Period	Spotter note
Beechcraft C-45	1964–1965	Air taxi of the founding years
Nord 262	1966–1971	First turboprop, start of scheduled service
Fokker F27	Late 1960s to 1978	High-wing aircraft with two turboprops
DC-9	from 1974	First the DC-9-14, later the -32 and -51 until the late 1990s
MD-82	1984–2017	The airline’s defining type
MD-83	1990s/2000s	Version with more range
BAe 146-200	1991–2004	Four-engine high-wing jet, including from Florence
Airbus A319	2004–2014	Replacement for the BAe 146
Airbus A320 and A330-200	about 2010–2014	Mainly from the Eurofly stock
Boeing 737-300	until 2016	Short and medium haul
Boeing 737-700 and 737-800	until 2018	Backbone of the final years
Boeing 767-200ER and 767-300ER	767-200ER until 2017, 767-300ER until 2018	Long haul and charter

The MD-82 is the airline’s symbol. The first two examples came to Alisarda in May 1985, and Meridiana did not retire the last aircraft of the family until 2017. That adds up to more than three decades in which the jets with two rear-mounted engines and the T-tail defined the Sardinia routes. How the individual members differ is shown in the overview of the MD-80 family.

From a mixed fleet to an all-Boeing fleet

With Eurofly and Air Italy, very different aircraft came together from 2010: Airbus A320s and A330s from charter operations, Boeing 737s and 767s from Air Italy and the airline’s own MD-80s. This variety was expensive. By the end of 2014, Meridiana therefore gave up the Airbus types, and the last two A320s left the fleet in that period. After that, the airline relied only on Boeing and the remaining MD-80s.

At the renaming in early 2018, the fleet consisted of about a dozen aircraft: one Boeing 737-700, several 737-800s and Boeing 767-300ERs. According to Italian sources, the average age was just under 19 years – a sign of how urgently the airline needed new capital.

How to recognize Meridiana

The most important feature in any photo is the “meridiana” title on the fuselage. According to Italian reports, the design of Meridiana’s early years stayed close in color to the last Alisarda livery – so the name change was above all a new title, not a complete break. In 2013, the airline introduced a joint design for Meridiana and the acquired Air Italy so that both operations appeared outwardly as one brand.

Because Meridiana took over many used aircraft and integrated other fleets through Eurofly and Air Italy, it is always worth checking registration and date when you see an unusual livery. If you are interested in historic designs, you will find related material in the article on retro liveries.

Hubs and routes

The airline’s heart always beat in Olbia. The administration was based here, the maintenance was here, and most rotations began here. Meridiana was also the main shareholder of the company operating Olbia Airport, founded in 1989. In summer, the route network from Olbia was especially dense, and in winter it shrank noticeably.

The most important connections led from Sardinia to the mainland: to Milan Linate, to Rome Fiumicino and, from Cagliari, also to Milan. There were also routes between mainland airports and to Sicily, for example to Catania and Palermo. Besides Olbia, the sources name above all Rome Fiumicino, Naples and Verona as focus points. The Florence base closed in 2011.

With Eurofly and Air Italy came charter and long-haul flights, for example to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Meridiana Maintenance handled maintenance at many airports across the country, including Milan Malpensa and Linate, Verona, Venice, Florence, Naples, Alghero, Cagliari, Palermo and Catania.

Mergers, partners and restarts

From the mid-2000s, Meridiana became a small consolidator in the Italian market. The phases at a glance:

Phase	Period	What happened
Eurofly	2007–2010	Control of the charter airline Eurofly, merged into Meridiana fly by February 2010
Air Italy	2011–2013	Takeover of the private charter airline Air Italy, joint holding company
Return to the brand	2013–2016	New capital from the Aga Khan, joint presence as Meridiana, frequent flyer program with Avios
Qatar era	2017–2018	49 percent for Qatar Airways, new focus on Milan Malpensa

The Eurofly integration brought long-haul experience and Airbus widebody aircraft into the fleet. The merger produced Meridiana fly S.p.A. for flight operations and Meridiana Maintenance S.p.A. for technical services. In 2011 came the takeover of Air Italy, a charter airline founded in 2005 with Boeing 737s and 767s.

2013 brought the turnaround. After heavy losses, the previous CEO left the company, and the Aga Khan increased the capital by 190 million euros. The airline again appeared uniformly as Meridiana. From 2014, frequent flyers had the Meridiana Club program based on Avios, which let you earn on British Airways and later Iberia as well.

In July 2016, Meridiana and Qatar Airways signed an agreement on a stake. It was carried out in September 2017: the newly founded AQA Holding was 51 percent owned by the Aga Khan’s Alisarda S.p.A. and 49 percent by Qatar Airways. Shortly afterward, the airline announced a restructuring – away from Linate, toward Milan Malpensa with new long-haul routes to the US. How the Gulf airline invested in Europe at the time is put in context by the article on the business model of the Gulf airlines.

The end of the name in 2018

On February 28, 2018, the airline flew for the last time as Meridiana. Since March 1, 2018 it was called Air Italy – with a new design, the hub Milan Malpensa and plans for significant growth.

So Air Italy was not a new airline but Meridiana under a new name. Legally and operationally, the story ran straight through – and that is the decisive point for your logbook. What happened next with Air Italy is covered on its own page for Air Italy.

Meridiana in the spotter’s routine today

For your logbook, Meridiana is above all an archive topic. If you photographed at Milan Linate, Rome Fiumicino or on Sardinia until 2018, you very likely have an MD-82 or a Boeing 737 of the airline on your memory card. With type, registration, location and date, these become clean entries. The guide Archiving aircraft photos gives tips on organizing your image archive.

You can even touch one classic today: I-SMEL, one of the airline’s early MD-82s, said goodbye in November 2016 with a final departure from Bologna, among others, and was then ferried from Olbia to Malpensa. Since then it has belonged to the Volandia aviation museum – how best to photograph it there is covered at the spot Volandia at Milan Malpensa Airport.

Tracing the other aircraft is also fascinating. The Boeing 737s and 767s first kept flying with Air Italy, after which the aircraft were spread among other operators or retired. How to trace an aircraft’s life history through its serial number and registration is explained in the guide How old is this aircraft?.

Common mix-ups

• Assuming Air Italy is a new airline – the Air Italy of 2018 to 2020 was the renamed Meridiana with the same codes.
• Equating the Air Italy of 2005 with the one of 2018 – the first was an independent charter airline that Meridiana took over in 2011.
• Confusing Aeroitalia with Air Italy – Aeroitalia is a separate, much younger company.
• Logging Alisarda and Meridiana as two airlines – it is the same company, just renamed in 1991.
• Always attributing Eurofly long-haul flights to Meridiana – before the integration in 2010, Eurofly was a separate operation with its own codes.
• Assuming Meridiana was a low-cost airline – it was a classic scheduled and charter airline based in Olbia.

Conclusion

Meridiana was Sardinia’s airline – founded to open up a vacation region and grown into one of Italy’s most important private carriers. From the Beechcraft C-45 through the DC-9 and MD-82 to the Boeing 767 runs a fleet history that fills many spotters’ archives. The name disappeared in 2018, and the company flew on for two more years as Air Italy. With I-SMEL at Volandia and many old photos, the airline stays visible.