No sooner had the Lufthansa Group's acquisition of a stake in ITA Airways been confirmed than the management teams of Lufthansa and ITA have revealed the timetable for the next few weeks leading up to the integration of the Italian carrier. The first immediate step is equivalence granted to loyalty programmes Miles & More: the 36 million Miles & More members and the 2.7 million Volare members can earn and redeem miles on all flights operated by ITA, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines.
Coordination within the hubs
With the start of the summer flight programme on 30 March 2025, ITA Airways and Lufthansa Group passengers will be able to enjoy the following benefits:
– ITA Airways to join the Lufthansa Group at Terminal 1 in Frankfurt and Terminal 2 in Munich. This move will considerably reduce passenger transfer times. At all the group's other hubs, as well as Rome-Fiumicino and Milan-Linate, the airlines work in the same terminal.
– From 30 March, ITA Airways passengers will be able to use the 130-odd lounges at the airport. of the Lufthansa Group and its partners. Conversely, passengers from Lufthansa and its subsidiaries will be able to use the ITA Airways lounges on the same date.
– More than 100 routes to benefit from code-sharing with summer schedules. They will enable flights from different airlines in the group to be combined in a single booking. Once implemented, this code-sharing will enable ITA Airways passengers to more than 250 destinations of the Lufthansa group. The range of flights will also include ITA Airways domestic routes to Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria and Puglia. All code-share connections can be booked from 25 February through all sales channels.
– Air links between hubs of the group - Frankfurt, Milan, Munich, Rome, Zurich, Vienna and Brussels - will be optimised. Spread out more evenly throughout the day, they will offer customers greater travel flexibility. Coordinated departure times will improve connections to long-haul destinations.
Star Alliance in 2026
The Italian airline joins Star Alliance will not be implemented until first half of 2026. Nevertheless, ITA Airways is already starting to distance itself from the SkyTeam alliance. For Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansaintegration is all benefits: " We want to move the merger forward quickly. This means that customers of all our airlines can quickly benefit from the advantages of an enlarged Lufthansa Group.. We are also convinced that ITA Airways will turn a profit this year. ".
