ROME, March 28: Alitalia’s nine unions on Friday rejected a revised version of Air France-KLM’s takeover plan for the nearly bankrupt Italian flag carrier, the ANSA news agency reported.

Billed as a final offer, the revised plan submitted overnight to the unions confirmed the intention to cut 2,100 jobs but sweetened severance terms, ANSA said.

The new proposal “substantially repeats what has already been shown to the unions” on Tuesday, eight of Alitalia’s nine labour unions said in a joint statement, adding that the unions “reconfirm that they find (the offer) inadequate.” The pilots union ANPAC was the first to reject the new plan early on Friday.

“For us pilots the Air France plan is over. It’s a closed chapter,” the head of ANPAC, Fabio Berti, told Italy’s Canale 5 television. “Everything we expected was confirmed in substance. There’s no improvement.”

Air France-KLM chief Jean-Cyril Spinetta was quoted as writing in the new offer’s cover letter: “We cannot go further without reopening discussion of the very fundamentals of our project for Alitalia.”—AFP