Mama mia.

Yesterday, Aeroflot, the Russian carrier that is the backbone of nearly every adoption trip to Russia, made a surprise bid for Alitalia.

After I picked myself up off the floor, I called one of my old college roommates. She had worked for Alitalia for many years (or "Always Late In Takeoff And In Arrival", as she used to call it) and I knew she would get a kick out of the story. And indeed, we had some laughs about the potential for inflight service on an Aeroflot-Alitalia combination.

The takeover is far from a done deal however: According to Reuters, Aeroflot will be bidding against a bid put together by Texas Pacific Group and the Italian banking giant Mediobanca, as well as against a bid by an investor behind Alitalia's chief domestic competitor, Air One. Reuters did not give terms of any of the bids.

But the mere fact that Aeroflot is competing in such leagues says volumes about how far it has come--and how far the Russian economy has come since perestroika.

As I noted last week in my series of three posts on the safety of air travel in Russia, Aeroflot has had just two fatal crashes since the airline was reorganized in late 1991. It has begun to purge all the old Soviet-era Tupolevs from its fleet and last month announced that it would buy 22 of Airbus' newest A350 jets, a $4.4 billion investment. Reuters contends that buying Alitalia would be a way for Aeroflot to continue to modernize its fleet without paying Russia's onerous customs taxes. (In a way, it's comforting to see that adoptive parents aren't the only ones going through hoops with Moscow.)

And while Texas Pacific has earned serious stripes for turnaround work--you might recall it was the entity that got Continental Airlines back in the black--Aeroflot's efforts of the last 15 years give it some serious street cred in the turnaround department too.

So could your next adoption flight begin with the words "Benvenuti a Aeroflot"? Stay tuned.