ITA Airways, Volare reaches half a million subscribers. Many things still don't work, however
ITA Airways' Frequent Flyer Program, launched last October 15, has reached half a million members. Numbers [...]
ITA Airways
SkyTeam
ITA Airways' Frequent Flyer Program., launched last October 15, has reached half a million subscribers. Numbers still far from those of the Millemiglia program, ended up in limbo With the end of Alitalia.
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To celebrate the milestone ITA Airways has decided to reward member No. 500,000 who, having enrolled with Smart status, will receive a gift upgrade directly to Executive, as many as three levels after the Smart.
"We are really pleased with the trust placed in us," said Emiliana Limosani, Chief Commercial Officer of ITA Airways and CEO Volare, "and this milestone is a demonstration of that. Precisely for this reason, we have decided to thank our 500,000th member by offering him membership in the Executive Club. Volare was created with the goal of putting the customer at the center and enabling them to accumulate and spend points with ease and flexibility. We are happy that our customers continue to choose us for their leisure and business trips, and very soon they will also be able to take advantage of the services and products of the partners who will join the program."
The Executive level allows immediate priority access to dedicated services such as Business Class check-in and transit counters, lounge access, fast track, extra baggage boarding, free seat choice, and 30% more points than Club Smart.
The "lame" frequent flyer
Unfortunately, 10 months after it was launched ITA Airways' loyalty program is still a lame duck. The cornerstones of a loyalty program are still missing, especially when a company participates in an alliance.
As of today, July 13, it is in fact impossible to accumulate points in the Volare loyalty program for flights made with carriers other than ITA and SkyTeam partners. The same applies to all SkyTeam privileges that are currently not given to passengers when they fly with alliance carriers.
The most serious deficiency, however, is the inability to use accumulated points to book an award ticket with both ITA and SkyTeam carriers. Despite managers' proclamations announcing the possibility of booking award tickets from as little as 2,300 points, to date the only option travelers have is to use the points with the cash-and-miles function, that is, to convert Volare points into a fixed economic value to be discounted from the ticket price.
Over the months, ITA top management has done nothing but repeat that all these "small" problems were being resolved. As of today, however, in the midst of the hot travel season, elite status holders are facing problems with non-recognition of benefits. For example, impossible to check extra baggage when flying SkyTeam, access lounges, and get priorities provided by SkyTeam Elite+ status.
We remain convinced that it will be up to the new ownership to really (re)launch the Volare program And who knows, who knows, it may come back to be called Millemiglia, since the old program is always on sale and the new owner of ITA would be free to buy it.
