Airline names tend to fall into broad categories. You have your standard geographic indicators – think American Airlines, British Airways and Air Canada – that evoke the airline’s location and associate it with a country’s heritage and feelings of reliability. Then there’s more aspirational names – your Frontier Airlines, IndiGo and JetStar – spriting us quickly on to new lands and new heights. While the start-up boom of the past two decades has spun its own realm of airline “disruptors” leaning into the realm of onomatopoeia to exemplify difference and cash in on that contemporary appeal – see the likes of Wizz Air, Zipair and Scoot.

Generally though, the advice is to take it easy with the name.

Now admittedly, one of the world’s best selling high-fantasy epics about hobbits, elves and dwarves doesn’t scream modern jet propulsion technology.

Still, one must acknowledge (while overlooking the plot holes) that the Great Eagles summoned by Gandalf the White to rescue Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee from the violently erupting mouth of Mount Doom do account for some loose, winged links.

Associating the wizard’s kind-hearted, wise and measured character with an airline would hopefully grace it with a similar aura. And, as Entertainment Weekly’s 3rd most popular wizard – with not one but two standalone films in works – he’s commanded some significant cultural cache to boot.

Whether or not Gandalf Airlines was named after the great wizard may be lost to time, but its choice of name couldn’t, in the end, have been more ironic. Instead of conveying poise, confidence and wise assurance, Gandalf Airlines’s plot was far less magical.

Today, the airline is no longer around and you’d be surprised to learn just how it all fell apart. No, the forces which undid Gandalf Airlines were not the same that tried to take down the actual Gandalf; Sauron didn’t file a regulatory complaint, Saurman didn’t go after customer service, there wasn’t even a Balrog in the way.

No, the way Gandalf Airlines seems to have fallen apart would be as if, instead of helping guide Frodo to the gates of Mordor, Gandalf had made off with the ring, used it to pay off personal debts, then lied about doing any of that before ultimately fessing up the truth.

In 2003, six or so years after it began operating, Gandalf Airlines hired a little-known Italian named Gaetano Francesco Intrieri as CEO. Intrieri’s time at the helm lasted for about five months before he resigned, along with the airline’s president. A few months later, the airline filed for bankruptcy.

Then, in 2004, a complaint triggered by shareholders, kicked off an investigation that all of a sudden led to Intrieri’s arrest and the accusation that he had syphoned off nearly €500 million for personal use.

In early interviews with prosecutors, Intrieri told investigators that the money had been used to reimburse an American company called Aviation World Services who requested to be paid under the table for tax reasons. Intrieri even produced a notarized certificate of the transaction made to Aviation World Services by a company based in Roveredo – a municipality in the Moesa Region of Switzerland – as well as a copy of the passport of the legal representative of that company.

Intrieri’s initial explanation for the payment was subsequently investigated by the Guardia di Finanza (an Italian law enforcement agency under the Ministry of Economy and Finance) who found that the payments to Aviation World Services had been completely fabricated.

With the help of the Swiss police, it was determined that the alleged payments were purportedly made through a Swiss company that had been in liquidation since 1999 and a bank that no longer existed. What’s more, that legal representative of the company Intrieri initially named was facing his own difficulties; including several ongoing bankruptcies and an Interpol request into accounts linked to him on suspicion of car theft and aiding illegal immigration.

It seems the company Intrieri kept was quite different from that of Gandalf; no unassuming yet brave hobbits, no noble and determined kings, or graceful and perceptive elves.

Intrieri later confessed to stealing and personally cashing the checks for approximately. €480,000,000 to repay personal debts to Banca Intesa, saying “the bank kept calling me and I couldn’t work peacefully” and describing his first, fabricated explanation as “bullshit”.

For his transgression, Intrieri received a 3 and a half year sentence for fraudulent bankruptcy which was then reduced to 2 years and four months and then completely cancelled by a nationwide pardon in 2006.

All this came to light when, in 2018, Intrieri was named a consultant for former Minister of Transport Danilo Toninelli. The outcry that followed resulted in Intrieri announcing his resignation from his post after about a month on the job.

Today, incredibly and somewhat inexplicably, Intrieri is now the CEO of newcomer airline AeroItalia. Perhaps he has some secretive magic touch? Some bewitching spell? 

Regardless, it turns out reality can be even more unbelievable than fantasy.