On September 18, Alitalia had restored flights to and from Bulgarian capital of Sofia.

Only a day earlier, the Italian flag carrier had cancelled a total of 40 flights which were to be serviced between 12am and 4pm Central European Summer Time to and from several European capitals, including the flights between Rome and Sofia. The reason pointed by the media statement of the company was an impending strike.

On September 16, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had said that the fate of the company would be decided in the 48 hours to follow. Berlusconi's statement came up at a time when trade unions and Alitalia's management were still negotiating on the fate of the staff at the struggling airline. Bankruptcy could leave a large part of Alitalia's nearly 20 000 employees jobless.

On September 18, Agence France-Presse reported that the Italian consortium Italian Air Company (CAI) that proposed to take over the Italian flag carrier withdrew its offer, "dooming [Alitalia] to bankruptcy", AFP quoted Radiocor agency as saying. CAI dropped its offer after failing to win the support of all nine labour unions for the government-backed rescue plan, Bloomberg said.

Earlier in the month, Air France-KLM also withdrew an offer at the last moment, further shaking Alitalia's stability.

The Italian government, which owns a 49.9 per cent stake in the carrier, declared Alitalia's bankruptcy on August 29, thus aiming to seek protection from creditors and re-launch the airline by taking over profitable assets by Italian investors and merger Alitalia with the smaller airline Air One, likely with a foreign carrier taking a minority stake.