FARE ALERT: Business Class New York – London From $1585 Roundtrip On New Alitalia

by Gary Leff

ITA Airways, the ‘new’ Alitalia, is running a fare sale between New York and London via Rome. Business class tickets are available as low as $1585 roundtrip when purchasing for travel in August and beyond. That’s roughly half the price you’d expect to pay for a non-stop, and more than $1,000 less per passenger compared to connecting itineraries on Aer Lingus and Austrian.

This is not a mistake fare. It’s an advance purchase ‘midweek excursion fare’ which requires a 7 night minimum stay. In other words, it’s a restrictive fare sale.

Key details of fare basis IN7LU7DT:

  • Day of week travel restrictions:
    FOR TRAVEL ON/AFTER 10APR 23
    PERMITTED MON/TUE/WED/SUN OR MON/TUE/WED/SUN OR MON/
    TUE/WED/SUN ON EACH TRANSATLANTIC SECTOR.
    FOR TRAVEL ON/AFTER 11APR 23
    PERMITTED TUE/WED/THU/FRI OR TUE/WED/THU/FRI OR TUE/
    WED/THU/FRI OR TUE/WED/THU/FRI ON EACH TRANSATLANTIC
    SECTOR.

  • 120 day advance purchase required
  • No stopovers permitted
  • Non-refundable, but no change fees (you’d pay difference in fare)
  • No extra charge for infant travel

ITA Airways, ‘the new Alitalia’, is only kind of sort of part of SkyTeam. You can’t earn Delta miles with these flights – only Delta codeshares for travel on ITA. You can, however, credit business class I fares on ITA to Virgin, earning 200% of miles flown. ITA has its own program of course, but only revenue-based redemptions on their own metal. And the airline may be sold to Lufthansa – hopefully Star earning and redemptions happens.

(HT: Loyalty Lobby)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. Not for me, not worth the inferior airline and backtracking (unless I did it with a stopover in Rome). I flew ITA in PE a few months ago and it was okayish but wouldn’t rush to repeat it. I called them when I booked asking to add my Skymiles number (since you indeed can’t do it online) and they said that while you can’t do that, you can contact Delta after the flight and they will credit the miles manually. Which I did, twice, and got a whole lot of niente.

  3. Alitalia was my introduction to my first fine Italian coffee service. (Yes, the golden age of flying before Starbucks brought espresso to the hoi polloi.) While my Italian friends were disgusted with Alitalia, I guess i got lucky.

    I haven’t tried ITA, yet. This may be my chance to give it the old college try. ¡Ciao baby e areivaderci!

  4. Why would you do this? Unless it was more expensive, I would take a coach seat on a nonstop. Business class travel is not “all that” — it’s an overpriced luxury good, that has little value if it results in increased travel time (aka, increased discomfort). It would be like choosing to drive a Mercedes from New York to Miami via St. Louis instead of driving a Corolla on a direct route. I know points bloggers overvalue “the experience,” but unless you’re a premium travel geek, this makes little sense.

  5. I would compare it to taking an RV with one stop instead of a corolla nonstop. There is a big difference in comfort between lie flat seats and economy.

    That said, I would pass on this one.

  6. @Gary, interesting post on ITA given that they also announced the opening of their new Hangar Lounge in Rome this morning.
    The devil, of course is in the details. Outbound to LHR — a 2:05hr layover??? This may be egregiously unfair but I fly into LHR on AA *a lot*. And I pity the folk who were duped into buying 2hr connections. More often than not it’s a complete goat rope. I am wondering why ITA and FCO will provide a better experience. Somehow, I doubt it. Return? there’s an overnight. Lots of hotels, apparently, and at reasonable prices for Italy, but it does seem like a lot of bother.
    I actually do want to try this airline — your comments about Lufthansa pique my interest too. However I have too many Star Alliance FF accounts as it is….

  7. @Chopsticks by your analogy I’m about to do something really bad next week, I live in northern NJ and taking a RT next week from Montreal to Amsterdam on KLM business class because of their recent flying club special of 27.5k miles in business class each way (Flying the same from EWR or JFK would cost minimum of 55k miles each way)

    This will entail a 6 hour drive each way to Canada so it “results in increased travel time (aka, increased discomfort)” to receive “an overpriced luxury good” for the “experience” and saving bunch of points hehe.

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