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Transadriatica and the First Italian National Airline Commercial aviation developed much more slowly in Italy than in other European countries. By the time that the first airlines had started in Italy in 1926, Germany, France and England had already established national and international air networks. Displaying pioneering vision, Transadriatica S.A. was among the first Italian companies to operate in this important sector. The impetus behind the company’s creation was the engineer Renato Morandi, who realized the project along with his father Gustavo Morandi, an important maritime broker in Ancona, and his brothers Mario and Bruno. He also benefitted from the substantial support of the Venetian Domenico Giuriati, a pilot in the Great War, as well as a noted jurist and member of the Chamber of Deputies. The company’s history began with a meeting between Renato Morandi and Hugo Junkers, the great German airplane designer and builder. Admiring Morandi’s ideas and initiative, Junkers invited him to spend some time at the factory in Dessau. This experience inspired Renato Morandi to believe that, by using Junkers’ planes (built entirely of metal at a time when planes were made of wood and canvas), he would be able to launch an airline on the other side of the Alps that would connect Italy with Eastern Europe. The success of the inaugural voyage, a flight from Venice (departing from Nicelli) to Vienna with a single-engine Junker I BATB, proved him right. Gaining access to the Lido airfield, though, was not easy. Reluctant to allow use of the facility since it was located in a fortified area, the Ministry of War had at different times proposed Zaule airport in Trieste and the Campalto airfield near Mestre, both in worse condition than the Lido airport. Transferring the San Nicolò airport to the aeronautic company, accomplished with Italo Balbo’s aid, resolved the problem. The success of Transadriatica, which had chosen San Nicolò as its base of operations, led to the airport’s first revival. The company’s planes (adorned with a logo featuring a blue swallow that was created by Amalia Venturini, a painter from Lido) flew to Graz, Vienna, Munich and major cities in Italy, including Trento, Florence, Rome, and Brindisi; the latter was a departure point for flights to the Middle East. After a few years, a project involving the air force and the local government enlarged and equipped the airport with the infrastructure necessary to ensure essential services; among the structures built were workshops that would later develop into a manufacturing centre for the aeronautics industry.
After Renato Morandi’s premature death in 1931, Transadriatica was acquired by the Ministry of Aeronautics. The assets were then transferred to the publicly held corporation Società Aerea Mediterranea (SAM) for the purpose of creating a holding company into which the private airlines would merge, as other European governments had already done. This merging of the private airlines also directly resulted from the crisis during the 1930s. Balbo nominated Umberto Klinger as President of SAM, which in 1934 became the first Italian national airline, under the name Ala Littoria S.A., after the merger of Adrio Lloyd of Tirana, Transadriatica of Venezia, SISA of Trieste, SANA of Genoa, Aeroespresso of Rome and Nord Africa of Bengasi. Umberto Klinger, who came from a Venetian family, continued Transadriatica’s traditions, adopting the swallow as the national airline’s symbol and elevating Nicelli airport to the rank of Italy's second most important airport. In 1935 Klinger and General Aldo Pelligrini, commander of the Civil Aviation Office, inaugurated the new airport, which was constructed with the help of great architects and artists. The workshops (which had the capacity to service up to 800 engines annually, made use of refined technologies and employed hundreds of Venetian workers and technicians) were enlarged; afterwards, in 1938, the spacious building that contained a cafeteria and a recreational area was also enlarged.
Klinger was president of the first Italian national airline until 1943. Under Klinger’s direction, the merger of the different companies was completed and an extensive network was created in the years preceding World War II. The company consequently became one of the most important European corporations, as well as the most important European airline operating in Africa, based on kilometres travelled per year.
Collaborazione per la parte storica dell'Associazione Amici Dell'Aeroporto G. Nicelli Elaborazione testi e selezione immagini a cura di Bruno Delisi e di Franco Briganti. Si ringraziano per la disponibilità gli archivi Aerofan, Caproni, Briganti, Klinger, Morandi e OAN
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