ITA Airways

This morning, American Express has launched a new targeted offer which gives select cardholders the opportunity to earn 17,500 Membership Rewards points when booking through ITA Airways in the next ~11 weeks. If you value Amex points at a similar price point to us, that represents a potentially excellent rebate.

Unfortunately, recent schedule updates have seen ITA trimming some of its routes, and one bit of trimming that may affect West coasters is the complete elimination of the airline's Rome - San Francisco route for winter 2024/25.

ITA Airways (Italy's Alitalia in a new guise) will be operating between Rome and Chicago from April next year and seats for this new route are already on sale. From a miles & points perspective, it's good to see that Business Class awards are also now available with surcharges starting at just $5.60.

Alitalia, as an airline, may be officially dead, but its spirit is very much alive within the newest Italian flag carrier ITA Airways. Over the weekend, news emerged that ITA is offering an elite status match to just about anyone and on the face of things, this looks like a pretty pointless status match (I'll explain why in a moment). Having thought this offer though a bit more, however, I'm starting to think that it may have its uses.