ITA Airways is the new Alitalia. They’re a member of SkyTeam, but only partially. You can’t redeem Delta miles to travel with them, for instance. But you can now redeem Virgin Atlantic miles. Their business class is good, availability is good, and there are no fuel surcharges.
Award space is wide open between January and March 2024 in business class for at least two people. They fly non-stop between Rome and New York, Boston, Washington Dulles, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles. And Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner of Chase, American Express, Citibank, Capital One, and Bilt. This is also one of the programs that we most frequently see bonuses for transferring points to.
Business Class Award Pricing:
- 75,000 points for flights 4,001 – 5,000 miles (New York, Boston, Washington Dulles)
- 85,000 points for flights 5,001 – 6,000 miles (Miami)
- 100,000 points for flights 6,001 – 7,000 miles (San Francisco, Los Angeles
Here’s the full award chart.
These aren’t inexpensive awards but with no fuel surcharges and a 30% transfer bonus (58,000 points transferred is enough for a business class award) this winds up as a pretty strong deal. And getting non-stop awards to Rome is very challenging otherwise. There isn’t a lot of competition at this point for U.S. – Italy awards on ITA.
It’s also worth noting that their distance based awards let you travel beyond Italy to other destinations in Europe for additional miles.
This may be a short-lived opportunity, because Lufthansa is buying control of the airline and then presumably they’ll exit SkyTeam and their partnerships like Virgin.
ITA will very likely leave SkyTeam eventually as it becomes part of the LH Group so now’s a good time to redeem.
Has anyone booked? hearing some or all of the space is phantom and dont want to transfer to VA if its a dead end.
I’m planning an extended trip to Italy in 2024. I keep ogling ITA as it provides me a good NS option from my home in Los Angeles…or a quick hop to SF for the same NS transcontinental service. I am delighted that LH is buying in…I am a longtime Star Alliance passenger. I assume ITA will transfer to SA sooner rather than later.
ECR12: DO NOT TRANSFER POINTS! PHANTOM AVAILABILITY!
I just transferred 100,000 from Amex to Virgin after seeing online availability one way in business from Palermo to Miami in SEP.. then went to Virgin book, and an error message showed up. Called Virgin, and the nice lady said ITA would not allow her to book this flight. EVEN THOUGH IT SHOWED AVAILABLE ON THE VIRGIN SITE! They do not play well together apparently! Now I am stuck with 100K in my Virgin account, who I never fly. Tried calling Amex to refund, they said to call Virgin and plead my case. Unbelievable.. Buyer beware!
I successfully booked 2 ITA biz award tickets on the VA site yesterday JFK-FCO without issue. Recommend calling to confirm availability before moving any points over though.
SOUNDS LIKE THIS POSTING WAS VERY POORLY CHECKED OUT PRIOR TO GOING TO PRINT !!
AND WHEN THE ARTICLE SAYS “Award space is wide open between January and March 2024 in business class for at least two people. ” DOES THAT MEAN ‘PER FLIGHT’ OR THE DEAL IS ONLY FOR TWO PEOPLE TOTAL ??
I hate that LH is grabbing them. That means an $800 YQ charge when leaving from the US. On top of that the whole LH group is now stingy with awards, and they have most of the airlines in Europe locked up. Then you would have to book using UA, charging 88K one way is a sin.