Alitalia Millemiglia program and American Express credit cards: days are numbered
These are very uncertain times for the Millemiglia program, or rather it would be better to say that Alitalia's loyalty program is destined [...]
Alitalia
SkyTeam
These are very uncertain times for the Millemiglia program, or rather it would be better to say that Alitalia's loyalty program. Is destined to disappear at the behest of the European Commission.
In this article:
One of the many stakes imposed by Brussels in giving the green light to the Italian government to rescue the company was to let Alitalia die and mark a real discontinuity between the current carrier and ITA, the newco that will take its place.
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After months of negotiations and many billions of euros of public money invested, we are at the point and, finally, Friday should see the signing that will sanction the final takeoff of the company led by the Altavilla-Lazzerini duo. If all goes smoothly, takeoff will come by November.
ITA will have to leave many slots, or take-off and landing rights, of the airport in Milan Linate. The city airport Milan has always been the unchallenged reign of Alitalia, and the Milan/Rome route has always been an AZ exclusive.
Then there is the loyalty issue: since ITA is to be a new company, the European commissioners have made it clear that it will not be able to use Alitalia's database of old customers, and therefore the Millemiglia club with its elite levels and namesake points must be left to the highest bidder, they will in no way be allowed to be part of the new company's perimeter. We have already explained in an article How this decision imposed from above is not a detriment to ITA, on the contrary.
Today, however, I want to approach it from the perspective of the American Express Alitalia credit cards, or products dedicated to customers who, instead of accumulating Membership Rewards points with daily expenses, they point directly to the Alitalia miles to then book award tickets with these.
What are the American Express Alitalia cards
Two types of cards are available in the market: personal and business. Personal ones are. the Green, the Gold and the Platinum, and the business the Basic and the Gold. Then there are corporate cards, but they are not the subject of this article.
The fate of these cards is sealed with the death of the Millemiglia program: they will be terminated by American Express, something similar to what was done recently by Agos credit cards cobranded with British Airways, Iberia and Vueling.
The regulation of the cards is related to the AZ loyalty program, to be an Alitalia Amex card holder you must be members of the Millemiglia loyalty program, the code is printed below the holder's name.
Therefore, an automatic change from one card to another will be impossible because there cannot be an automatic enrollment from one program to another. In any case, one must also consider that it is not certain that the marriage between American Express and ITA will be repeated, recently Alitalia papers have been launched also from Deutsche Bank and having to start from scratch everything will come back into question.
The glass half full
Personally, I always try to see things from a positive point of view. First of all, in these months I tried to undo all my MM points by booking flights for 2022, I currently still have 200k points that I plan to use in the next few days to book a Etihad ticket to fly to Phuket And breathe the vacation air again.
Assuming that ITA will launch the new loyalty program immediately and that Amex and ITA will activate a partnership in close proximity, I am convinced that for all serial accumulators of points and miles, a rich bonus season will open.
I say this because, being a new program, all former Alitalia Amex holders will have the opportunity to earn rich welcome bonuses again to accumulate lots of points from the new loyalty program. This is because ITA will need to cash out, and the points that are given away with credit cards are sold by the companies to banks, so they are a source of income. American Express, moreover, will not want to shunt customers away to products of competing banks.
The glass half empty
Being optimistic is right, but one must also be realistic. The new Alitalia, or whatever it will be called, will have a small fleet and an intercontinental network with very few routes. This means little chance of using accumulated points to book award tickets. At the moment, then, it is impossible to know which alliance it will decide to work with: Stay in Skyteam or move with Lufthansa to Star Alliance?
It will take at least all of 2022 to see if and how points beyond the classic routes to New York, Brazil/Argentina, and (perhaps) Tokyo can be invested.
In conclusion
I have been a holder of these types of cards for over 10 years, and have accumulated and used over 2 million Millemiglia points for flights to Japan, New York, Miami but also to Southeast Asia and other destinations through partners. Now all that remains is to wait for the inevitable and play our cards right in the restart.
