I bought a ticket with ITA. The flight is ITA but the plane is from a different company
Wet leasing is a widespread practice in commercial aviation. Companies lease aircraft and crews from other companies to carry out normal transportation activities
ITA Airways
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Recently, there has been a lot of noise about the ITA Airways flight that before departing from London has Asked some passengers to disembark to lighten the plane And take off safely. That flight was operated by German Airways on behalf of ITA Airways., a very popular procedure in the world of commercial aviation that is called wet-lease.
What is wet lease
This service is a turnkey product that an operator offers to other carriers, usually scheduled carriers, to make up for a lack of machines/equipment, cope with traffic peaks, or more simply take over particular routes that would otherwise be impossible to handle with the aircraft in the company's fleet.
The lessee provides aircraft, crews, maintenance, and any other services related to the operation of a flight, renters need do no more than pay an hourly charge and/or a fixed charge for the service.
It is not only ITA Airways that caters to these companies, Indeed. For example, Air Baltic has made aircraft (the brand new A220/300s) and crews available to Lufthansa, Swiss, and SAS. It has happened to me before, for example, to fly with a Swiss ticket and a flight operated entirely by Air Baltic aircraft and personnel.
The crazy thing about this market is that to operate its routes around Europe Air Baltic has in turn turned to other operators to wet lease aircraft, which are older and more inconvenient on which to fly its passengers, evidently finding it more convenient to lease its ultra-modern planes to third parties and renting out old planes for its passengers.
These are not code-sharing flights
Mind you, we are not talking about code-share flights, that is, sold by ITA but operated in part or in full by companies such as Air France, KLM, Delta or other carriers, but of flights sold by ITA, and operated on behalf of ITA by companies specializing in these services.
Laws require carriers to specify, when selling tickets, who will operate the flight in question and in case of changes, it is a passenger's right to be able to request a change of reservation or refund of the ticket.
In the case of Air Baltic, I often happened to fly last summer aboard aircraft not in the Latvian carrier's livery and to apologize for the inconvenience I received 10€ discount voucher each time.
Companies that fly on behalf of ITA
At this time, ITA Airways is mainly targeting three companies-Air Nostrum, Hibernian, and German Airways.
The first two are two Spanish companies that lease small CRJ1000s, ancestors of the A220, manufactured by Bombardier, to ITA. German Aiways, That of the flight to be lightened, flies Embraer aircraft. One of the two currently in the fleet for ITA has had a very brief history in EGO Airways livery and name Martina In the unfortunate interlude of the Romagna company.
Also contributing to a tiny bit of confusion is the fact that the livery of the CRJ1000s has, in addition to the Air Nostrum logo, the words Iberia Regional and the OneWorld alliance sticker. In fact, the owner of the fleet is Iberia itself, which also uses it for its own flights in addition to providing it on wet lease to other airlines.
On board these planes are crews provided by the respective companies and as in the case of the LCY/LIN flight, the crew hardly speaks Italian. The same service is provided on board that you get on blue livery aircraft, even though it is the Quality of aircraft to be significantly lower compared to the more modern machines in the fleet at our national airline.
Flights accumulate points fly
Unlike with tickets bought through ITA and flown by code-share airlines, which currently (and inexplicably) do not cumulate Flying points, Wet-lease flights allow passengers to regularly accumulate qualifying and non-qualifying points.
Where do these planes fly
Unlike the A320 fleet, which is absolutely interchangeable these planes also fly specific routes, Either for technical reasons or reduced demand.
Waiting for all A220s to arrive in order ITA connects Linate with London City via German Airways aircraft, as well as CRJ1000s are often used on routes such as Brussels, Amsterdam, and other destinations where ITA operates more routes and some rotations, from Linate, are made with these smaller and cheaper aircraft than A320s.
In conclusion
ITA's fleet will arrive at the end of 2023 profoundly renewed, many of the routes operated today with aircraft from these three companies will be operated with the new A220/100s and A220/300s and with the rest of the Aribus that will be delivered in the coming months to the carrier by Airbus and leasing companies.
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