ITA Airways surprisingly renews statuses to loyalty program members ex officio
Yesterday morning ITA Airways sent a congratulatory email to all loyalty program members, according to the latest [...]
ITA Airways
SkyTeam
Yesterday morning ITA Airways sent a congratulatory email to all loyalty program members, according to the latest official statements are about 800 thousand users from around the world who have applied for membership to the Italian flag carrier's frequent flyer.
The Flying program
In this article:
In Italy, prize contests, and loyalty programs such as Volare, fall under this regulation have a maximum duration, unless extended, of 36 months. However, this is the duration of the program, which was born on 10/15/21 has an expiration date of 10/15/24. Status cards are valid for one year and for the vast majority of users the end date was next December 31.
Many members switched to Volare through one of the three campaigns of status match launched by ITA Airways, but without having the opportunity to renew the status in the field they would have lost the level, thanks to this ex officio renewal, instead no one will lose their privileges until the end of next year.
However, the issue of flying points is different at the moment. the expiration of accumulated points is scheduled for October 15, 2024. Different is the case with the qualifying points Flying has not announced any rollover activity, this means that all members will see their balance reset to zero and will have to start the climb to renewal from the bottom again.
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Flying is the only frequent flyer program that has decided, in 2022., of renew membership ex officio To all loyalty program members.
Why ITA gave this gift
Of course, there are no official reasons for this, but it is easy to identify the reasons for this choice:
- Do not depreciate the value of the loyalty program at this stage of sale negotiations. Having Xmila top tier is an asset that creates value
- Lots of users who have top tier status have earned it not in the field, but through status match, many are elite due to the fact that they owned an Alitalia credit card which does not exist today
- The reduced network and difficulties in travel until this summer gave users little chance to accumulate points
- The lack of point accumulation agreements with flights operated by Skyteam has made it impossible for many users to renew status in the field
- For the reason mentioned above a great many users have "jumped" to competing programs such as Air France's Flying Blue and KLM, or depending on the carrier directly into other alliances
- With members of the first status match campaign already safe, it was important to create a parachute for everyone else, and ex officio renewal was the easiest thing to do
No gifts to those who flew ITA Airways
This year I, like many, have also "abandoned" ITA Airways concentrating my accumulations of Skyteam flights on Flying Blue, nevertheless I've flown a lot with ITA and also thanks to the various promotions I was able to move up from Premium to Executive.
As stated in the email The difference between those who have flown "a lot" and those who have not flown is that the former got a handshake, the latter a nice gift. I think this is a mistake in the communication strategy, hopefully Volare will make up for this in some way.
But now we have to see where this Volare card will have value, if the sale to Lufthansa gets the white smoke there will be a transition to Star Alliance, and things will change dramatically for all Volare members.
