The story
The airline was established in December 1995 and was a joint venture by the Italian investment group Air International Services (51%) and by Air Malta (49%). It started operations in December 1996. By the end of 1999, a significant portion of the business was carried out on behalf of Alitalia with BAe 146s, some of them in the full colours of the Italian flag carrier. AIS shares were purchased by UK based 7 Group in 2003, anticipating the purchase of Air Malta shares later that year.
In November 2003 it was announced that Azzurra Air was to take over French airline Air Littoral, but this fell through in the following month as Azzurra Air was in financial difficulties. In March 2004 operations were suspended when its regional fleet was withdrawn by lessor and co-owner Air Malta due to non-payment of leases. It had just over 400 employees. The company was declared bankrupt in July 2004. It had five Airbus A320-200 aircraft on order at the time.
From Wikipedia’s article on Azzurra Air, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3