ITA Airways bookable with Partner Airlines

In the past year or two, Virgin Atlantic joined SkyTeam and ITA Airways was launched ( formerly known as Alitalia). Every points and miles nerd has been eagerly waiting to see what award space would look like once ITA Airways business class was finally bookable with points. Well, well, well…

In July, we were given the first program to make ITA bookable: Virgin Atlantic.  Now we have FlyingBlue! (hattip OMAAT )

The pricing isn’t too bad! Let’s take look.

Booking with Virgin Atlantic

Virgin has a ton of partners and historically known for their amazing redemption pricing on ANA and Delta; however, these have been progressively more and more difficult to find. Now…we have a new redemption option with ITA Airways that doesn’t have the egregious fuel surcharges.

SkyTeam

Other

How does Virgin Atlantic price ITA Airways flights

Virgin uses a distance based chart meaning those of you on the west coast are going to be the higher end on cost, and those of you in NYC who would like to fly to Milan are going to get a pretty darn good deal.

Where does ITA Airways fly?

The easiest way to find this information is by going to Flight Connections, but currently ITA Flies to the following cities and economy/business class prices as follows

How to find the award space… Use Virgin Atlantic

Populating the calendar mode.

First you want to search with flexible dates and then change the search bar after you get results.

Just delete “dates” and change it to “calendar” you’ll then see a full calendar of options

Let’s take a look at DC to Rome…. you’ll start to see more and more flights available starting in March/April on ITA Airways. Of course, if you’re willing to pay some extra surcharges and layover in Amsterdam or Paris, you could book for far fewer points ( those are the flights at 48.5k and $300+ in surcharges ).

Here is what it looks like when you open up a date with 75k + $6 avail

How to book ITA Airways with FlyingBlue

I love the FlyingBlue program – it’s a transfer partner of Amex, Bilt, Chase, Capital One, and Citi so you’re pretty assured to have access to their points if you carry any of my Main Cast of cards. Beyond that, nearly every single transferrable currency has had transfer bonuses to FlyingBlue throughout the year…so you’re getting even more bang for you buck! Let’s take a look at how you find award space on ITA Airways using FlyingBlue miles.

Search with calendar function

Leave the departure date blank to pull up the calendar

How does ITA Airways Pricing work with FlyingBlue?

Example of a flight from FCO to Rome

What to expect from ITA Airways Business Class?

ITA has two iterations of business class featured on two different planes: A350-900 and the A330-900neo. Both are very good, but the business class on the A330 was chosen by ITA vs the A350s were adopted by ITA Airways. Here’s what they look like:

A350 business class

A330-900neo business class

Overall

I had difficulties finding space to Milan, or from LA or SFO at the moment, but it’s good to see a potential new way to use points to fly to Italy, and direct to boot! Keep an eye on transfer bonuses because that is when routes like these actually become quite competitively priced.

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• Full Review
• Best uses of Chase Ultimate Rewards
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• Credit Card Spreadsheet with historical data on best offer

Is this the best ever offer?

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

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Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

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