Alitalia (AZA, Rome Fiumicino) may consider purchasing SSJ 100/95 aircraft Nazario Cauceglia, the Chief Executive Officer of Superjet International, has said. In an interview with the Itar-TASS newswire, Cauceglia said a recent Etihad Airways (EY, Abu Dhabi International) decision to invest EUR1.758billion (USD2.357billion) into Alitalia in return for a 49% stake could see a change in the Italian carrier's position apropos the SuperJet.

The Emiratis, however, may have other plans as their strategy to turn Alitalia into a profitable entity includes cutting loss-making short-haul routes while decreasing Alitalia's narrow-body fleet from its current size of 90 aircraft.

In 2010, Alitalia abandoned plans to acquire twenty SSJ 100s from Sukhoi Civil Aircraft (Zhukovsky) in favour of Embraer (EMB, São José dos Campos Professor Urbano Ernesto Stumpf) Regional Jets. At the time, the carrier said that while it wanted to support the project, a joint venture between Italy's Alenia Aermacchi (51%) and Sukhoi Holding (49%), it could not commit to an aircraft that had yet to enter operational service.