The outgoing Italian government has approved a new 300m emergency loan to keep Alitalia afloat.
The move came a day after Air France KLM withdrew its bid for the loss-making carrier.
The loan was made at the request of the incoming prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who is seeking time to find an alternative bidder for the chronically troubled national carrier.
It was made despite the European Commission saying Alitalia could not receive any more state aid until 2011.
The loan gives Alitalia a breathing space as previously it only had cash to keep flying until the end of next month.
During the Italian election campaign, Mr Berlusconi spoke of an Italian consortium ready to step forward with a bid but this has so far not happened.
Air One, an Italian low cost carrier whose first bid was rejected in favour of the AF KLM offer, wants to see Alitalia's books before making another bid.
Mr Berlusconi has also indicated he would listen to a bid from Russian carrier Aeroflot which was among the original potential bidders last year but dropped out.
In a terse statement, AF KLM told the Italian national carrier that "contractual arrangements" announced last month "were no longer valid, the conditions precedent that had to be satisfied prior to launching were not fulfilled."
The French bid stumbled on its plan to cut operations at Milan's Malpensa Airport and make 2,000 workers redundant.
The Alitalia trades unions refused to accept it and the managers of Malpensa declined to drop a threatened 1.2bn lawsuit against AF KLM.