Wings Across the Alps: Fiat, Agnelli, and Avio Linee Italiane in Milan, 1926

While early commercial air transport relied heavily on wooden biplanes and fragile maritime flying boats, ALI demanded aircraft capable of defying treacherous Alpine turbulence, icing conditions, and high-altitude mountain passes. Backed by Fiat’s cutting-edge aeronautical division (*Fiat Aviazione*), designer Celestino Rosatelli created an extraordinary series of all-metal transports, culminating in the 1935 *Fiat G.18*—an elegant twin-engine airliner carrying eighteen passengers in soundproofed comfort at speeds exceeding 400 km/h.

ALI’s flight captains were heroic navigators who charted blind-flying instrument techniques through cloud-choked Alpine valleys without modern radar, earning the airline an enviable international reputation for punctuality and navigational safety.

Following the devastation of the Second World War, ALI briefly resumed services before merging in 1949 into the national airline that consolidated Italian air transport. Yet the physical ground from which ALI’s planes took wing—the Taliedo aerodrome along Via Mecenate and the monumental concrete hangar structures of the Idroscalo—remain foundational monuments of Milan’s modern aviation heritage.

Today, the Historical Aeronautical Collections of the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci” preserve original instrumentation, logbooks, and scale models of ALI’s silver airliners, commemorating the bold aviators who opened Italy’s airways in 1926.