Via Domenico Cempella is a new toponymic addition to Fiumicino Airport. A well-deserved tribute that Enac and its president, Pierluigi Di Palma, wanted to pay to the former Alitalia CEO who passed away five years ago. An unusual recognition, as it is the first time this has happened in the history of Italian aviation.
The name Alitalia, after all, will always be linked to three names: Bruno Velani, the company head at the airline’s inception, Umberto Nordio, the president in the 1980s who wanted to buy Aerolinas Argentinas, and, indeed, Domenico Cempella, the manager of the remarkable industrial turnaround and the man who first understood that the era of national flag carriers in Europe was ending and that international integration was necessary. The famous merger project with KLM, which at the time was something visionary, but we will come back to that.
THE START AT CIAMPINO
To tell Domenico Cempella’s story, we need to start from the beginning, in 1957. The twenty-year-old Domenico, recently orphaned of his father, was living in a university dormitory when he applied for a job at the national airline. He was hired for a trial period, a two-month contract, with reduced pay because he was a minor, as the age of majority was 21 at that time.
His first job was as a check-in clerk at Ciampino Airport (Fiumicino airport would open only four years later). The apprenticeship was immediately hands-on. His tutor, let’s call him that, greeted him briskly: “Look, this is an airline ticket. When the passenger shows up, you get it from them, tear off this part, weigh their luggage, and check it in. I’ll be back in a while.” Having said that, the senior employee disappeared and reappeared at the end of the shift.
Anyway, Cempella managed well and was confirmed after the two months. He brought his mother to Rome from Montefiascone, moving into an inexpensive apartment on the outskirts of the capital. To cover expenses, he worked double shifts, from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., leaving home at 3 a.m. This beginning of his professional story explains the respect and consideration with which, first as a manager and later as CEO, he was always regarded by colleagues. For many of them, when he passed through the airport as the company head, he was always Mimmo.
PROFESSIONAL CLIMB
During his career, he held positions of increasing responsibility under various managements including Cesare Romiti, Umberto Nordio, and Gianni Bisignani, from station manager to passenger division head. He was, for example, the one who introduced the frequent flyer program – MilleMiglia – to the company.
For several years he also led Aeroporti di Roma as general manager when the airport company was still under Alitalia’s control. The flag carrier accompanied the birth and growth of various airport companies, holding shares, and Adr was part of the AZ holding. For a short period, he left Alitalia, and a little-known aspect of Cempella’s CV is the collaboration he started then with Raul Gardini. Through an intercession by Gianfilippo Cuneo, the two met in Parma during a Confindustria assembly. “There I met Gardini,” Cempella said, “he told me he was interested in the airport privatization dossier and asked if I wanted to work on it.” His company Isa spa had recently acquired a minority stake in Forlì airport. Cempella, appointed president of Seaf, prepared a business plan aiming to develop cargo traffic and an agreement with the Republic of San Marino to make the Romagna airport the reference airport for the Republic of Titano.
The project stopped in July ’93 when Cempella was called by Renato Cassaro of Iri to lead Autostrade. That experience was also not marked by good fortune, due to a difficult relationship with chairman Giancarlo Elia Valori and unclear governance from the shareholder. In this case, Iri proposed to Cempella, after a couple of years, to return to aviation, becoming CEO of Aeroporti di Roma, which had meanwhile exited Alitalia’s perimeter.
ALITALIA TAKES OFF AGAIN
Cempella’s second stint at Adr lasted only a few months because the situation at Alitalia was becoming increasingly critical. The “American” management with the ticket Renato Riverso (ex IBM) and Roberto Schisano (ex Texas Instruments) was leading the company toward bankruptcy. There was talk of a possible sale to British Airways. The atmosphere was extremely tense, unions were in revolt. Iri decided to turn the page and summoned Cempella. “The company’s situation is out of control. You are an Iri man and now the Institute needs you. Do you feel like taking the helm of the company? No one knows it like you,” said president Michele Tedeschi, alongside general manager Enrico Micheli, future undersecretary to the Prime Minister’s office with Romano Prodi.
Cempella, after taking 48 hours to think, replied to Tedeschi, “Mr. President, I am not returning to Alitalia to turn off the lights. I am coming back with the goal of lifting it up and making it a great airline.” “That is also our program,” concluded the Iri president.
Cempella devised a very ambitious turnaround plan, first of all rekindling team spirit with a group formed by Gianni Sebastiani, Claudio Carli, Marco Zanichelli, Franco Raffaele, Gianni Lionetti, Massimo Chieli, Mario Pascucci, and the younger Giulio Demetrio, Fausto Palombelli, Giancarlo Zeni, Massimo Panagia, Giorgio Callegari, Massimo Polimeni.
The plan focused on easing social tensions with a historic industrial relations agreement, distributing a 20% share package of the company to employees in exchange for no wage increases and higher productivity. Alitalia Team was born, a company with more efficient contracts, capable of responding to increasingly aggressive competition due to deregulation. The hub shift from Fiumicino to Malpensa was initiated, as requested by the shareholder and the European Commission. And finally, the great integration project with the Dutch KLM.
Cempella, in fact, was the first among his European colleagues to clearly understand that the era of flag carriers, sitting on rent positions, was over; it was necessary to move toward larger dimensions, and the home garden was no longer the single nation but Europe. When, with Leo van Wijk, KLM CEO, he began outlining the merger project, all eyes in the industry were on Rome and Amsterdam. Air France, British Airways, Lufthansa, Swissair, Iberia, SAS all watched with interest to understand if that was the path to follow. Until then, there had been acquisitions but never a merger of equals.
The project then failed when the Dutch, exasperated by the unreliability of the Italian System and the continuous changes in traffic distribution between Malpensa and Linate (the original plan was to leave the city airport only the shuttle to Fiumicino), decided to unilaterally break the alliance. It was a sudden and unexpected decision for Cempella, who learned it one morning at 8 from Van Wijk after they had long discussed the new company’s organization chart the day before, with the enhancement of both Italian and Dutch managers. Joint ventures for passenger activities (led by the Dutch Henry Essenberg) and cargo (led by the Italian Mario Pascucci) had already been active for two years.
It was a real shock for Cempella, who had fought for that project, even overcoming hostility from some political quarters. The secretary of the Communist Refoundation Party, Fausto Bertinotti, had strongly protested to Prime Minister Romano Prodi over the Dutch choice, instead asking for a marriage with Air France, due to elective affinities with Jospin’s France and the 35-hour workweek. Pressed by Bertinotti, Prodi summoned Cempella to Palazzo Chigi and asked if he could change his mind, and the CEO replied, “Romano, of course we can change, but you will have to do it with another company head, because I am not willing. All data tells us KLM is the best choice.” Prodi, having heard the objection, encouraged him to proceed with Amsterdam.
THE CEREMONY AT FIUMICINO
An emotional crowd yesterday attended the ceremony at Fiumicino dedicating the street to Cempella. On stage were Enac president Pierluigi Di Palma, Aeroporti di Roma CEO Marco Troncone, ITA Airways chief innovation, strategic projects and vision Francesco Presicce, Fiumicino municipality councilor Raffello Biselli, former Alitalia general manager Gianni Sebastiani, and the manager’s son, Pier Giorgio Cempella.
Troncone, specifying that he never personally met Cempella but knows his story and successes very well, emphasized how he is a source of inspiration, highlighting “the great drive made also of thought, structure, design, vision toward progress, toward building something bigger through, naturally, partnerships, thus expanding the perimeter however complex it may be, whether infrastructural. At that time, naturally, there was a somewhat different infrastructural project than the current one, obviously expanding the perimeter, seeking scale in the market with KLM. This great drive and persistence is clearly what we would always like to have with us to try, naturally, to pursue and follow the path of progress.”
His son Pier Giorgio recalled that his father “was a talented manager, but above all had a special gift, he was imbued with incredible humanity and had the ability to listen. This came from the path he had taken in a company where he started as a clerk at Ciampino to reach the top. Yes, Dad was the symbolic CEO of Alitalia, as the plaque says, but all the things he did, he always said, would not have been possible without the support of a team in which he deeply believed, recognizing their professionalism and competence. He always believed in Alitalia’s potential and thanks to this conviction carried out such important projects. Dad was also deeply attached to Fiumicino Airport. There was not a day, when he could, that he did not come to the terminal and take a walk in the terminals, where everyone greeted him, recognized him, and called him by his nickname, Mimmo.”
