Italy’s ITA Airways has huge development plans.
Since turning into a part of the Lufthansa Group in January, the airline has pivoted. It has synced schedules with Lufthansa and linked its Volare loyalty program with the group’s loyalty program, Miles & Extra. Moreover, the provider departed the SkyTeam alliance in favor of Star Alliance and utilized to affix Lufthansa’s profitable transatlantic three way partnership with United Airways and Air Canada, amongst different modifications.
“The combination half is an enormous problem,” Joerg Eberhart, CEO of ITA, stated in an interview with TPG in New York on Friday. “Lufthansa stated this would be the quickest integration the group ever did. … We’re striving, Lufthansa’s striving for having this finished inside two years.”
In different phrases, ITA could possibly be a full-fledged contributing member of the Lufthansa Group by 2027. That features the group taking full management of the Italian airline, up from the 41% it owns as we speak.
ITA’s turnaround and integration come at a difficult time for the Lufthansa Group. The group has lagged behind its principal European opponents, Air France and KLM, and British Airways- and Iberia-owner Worldwide Airways Group, financially. In September, executives unveiled a plan to chop prices, enhance effectivity and enhance centralized administration in an effort to lift margins. And integrating ITA with its strategically vital hub at Rome Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport (FCO) is essential to these plans.
The truth is, of all of the Americas, the U.S. options extremely in Lufthansa’s ambitions for ITA.
Future United three way partnership accomplice
“The U.S. market is crucial marketplace for us, in addition to the home market in Italy,” Eberhart stated.
Lufthansa and United have wasted no time making use of for U.S. Division of Transportation approval to incorporate ITA of their transatlantic three way partnership, often known as A++. Inclusion would permit ITA to coordinate schedules and fares, collectively market and promote flights, and in any other case combine with its companions between Europe and the U.S. The pact additionally contains Austrian Airways, Brussels Airways and Swiss.
A giant promoting level of this type of coordination is the promise of recent routes and flights that, the airways declare, will not be attainable with no three way partnership. The draw back is that vacationers lose an impartial competitor as airways in these tie-ups collectively worth flights.
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ITA and United launched a loyalty partnership in September.
“We [will] strive then to prepare the ITA community the identical means that we might have connecting factors with the system of United,” Eberhart stated.
Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and Newark Liberty Worldwide Airport (EWR) are two United hubs ITA would take into account including flights to beneath a three way partnership from FCO, Eberhart added.
The Italian airline already serves seven U.S. airports, together with Chicago’s O’Hare Worldwide Airport (ORD), New York Metropolis’s John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport (JFK) and Dulles Worldwide Airport (IAD) close to Washington, D.C., schedule information from aviation analytics agency Cirium reveals.
ITA hopes to safe U.S. approval to affix the three way partnership inside 12 months — or by October 2026 — and fly its first joint schedule in the summertime of 2027, Eberhart stated.
Planes (and earnings) may gradual ITA’s enlargement
There’s no less than one huge hitch to ITA’s development plans: plane.
The airline solely has 22 long-haul Airbus A330-200s, A330-900s and A350-900s that may fly transatlantic routes. And the six A330-900s ITA has on order are slated to interchange the 5 older A330-200s in its fleet.
“It is kind of a problem of availability as we wish to develop our new know-how A350,” Eberhart stated. “We’d take into account, as a fallback resolution, the A330-900, however then we would want the prolonged vary — South America routes we want the A350, additionally Japan, additionally the West Coast.”
Airbus lacks new A350 supply slots till the early 2030s, and leased planes are prohibitively costly, he added. Nonetheless, ITA is on the lookout for used plane offers and, when it’s totally built-in into the Lufthansa Group, may gain advantage from its a lot bigger orderbook.
Lufthansa suffers from its personal challenges getting new twin-aisle plane because of a mix of delays at main plane-makers Airbus and Boeing and a backlog certifying the group’s new suite of premium seats, Allegris.
Then there may be the query of ITA’s steadiness sheet. The Lufthansa Group is decided to show the airline, a relaunched model of Italy’s traditionally loss-making Alitalia, right into a worthwhile enterprise. It reported a 46 million-euro ($54 million) working loss within the first half of 2025 and, as Eberhart informed Italian day by day Corriere della Serra in September, goals “to get very near break-even” within the final half of the yr.
Southern enlargement alternatives
Carsten Spohr, CEO of the Lufthansa Group, has beforehand spoken of FCO as a brand new gateway to Africa and Latin America for the group.
“We’re lacking a southern hub in comparison with our European opponents, particularly for the rising [origin and destination] visitors out and in of Africa and Latin America,” he stated in 2021.
Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) is a significant gateway to Africa for Air France and KLM, and Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD) to Latin America for IAG.
ITA is eyeing Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Lagos, Nigeria, in Africa and Bogota, Colombia; Lima, Peru; and Santiago, Chile, in South America for future development, Eberhart stated. Nevertheless, whereas the African locations could possibly be served from FCO by the airline’s fleet of premium-configured Airbus A321neos, South American enlargement requires further twin-aisle jets, as does U.S. development.
One risk for ITA is long-range, single-aisle planes. The airline is testing the enterprise case for narrow-body planes with a premium format on a number of Airbus A321neos that it at present flies to, together with Kotoka Worldwide Airport (ACC) in Accra, Ghana, and Blaise Diagne Worldwide Airport (DSS) close to Dakar, Senegal, amongst different airports. If these show profitable, one thing Eberhart stated they’ll know by 2027, ITA may take into account an order for the long-range A321LR and even the longer-range A321XLR.
“We did the calculation, the LR may attain from Rome to the East Coast of the U.S.,” Eberhart stated. “In fact it will cowl all of the Center East [and] all of sub-Saharan [Africa] locations.”
The A321XLR may fly deeper into the U.S. and even to japanese South America from FCO in a low-density premium format, he added.
Loyalty and alliance modifications
Whereas ITA awaits planes for intercontinental enlargement, the airline is transferring ahead at breakneck pace with its loyalty and alliance integration into the Lufthansa Group.
In accordance with Eberhart, the airline plans to merge Volare into Miles & Extra by the top of February. The airline has already synchronized its incomes, redemption and standing {qualifications} with the group’s loyalty program.
As for Star Alliance, ITA goals to finish membership within the international airline confab within the subsequent “six to eight months” — or by June 2026 — Eberhart stated. The provider departed the SkyTeam alliance that its predecessor, Alitalia, was a member of for Star Alliance in February.
“We’re already getting ready the [Star Alliance] livery for an plane,” Eberhart stated in anticipation.
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