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Right now, ITA Airways (the latest incarnation of Alitalia) isn’t a hugely interesting airline to a lot of people in the miles & points hobby because, frankly, it’s part of SkyTeam and SkyTeam is, by a distance, the dullest and least useful of the major airline alliances.
In the coming months, however, a significant percentage of ITA will be purchased by Lufthansa Group and once that deal is completed, the airline is expected to join the Miles & More loyalty program and join the Star Alliance.
That will make it a lot more interesting.
Unfortunately, however, 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.
A few weeks ago, we saw ITA suspend its Rome – San Francisco service from 7 January though 28 February 2025, and the latest changes see the airline removing the 3x/week service that had been scheduled to operate in November and December.
As things stand, it looks like ITA plans to restart the route from 1 March 2025 with a 3x/week service on the following schedule:
AZ640 FCO 09:15 – 13:15 SFO (Tue, Thu & Sat)
AZ641 SFO 15:15 – 12:15+1 day FCO (Tue, Thu & Sat)
The schedules show that this route will be operated by ITA’s Airbus A330-900neo aircraft which feature 30 Business Class seats (Thompson Vantage XL seats similar to the ones you’ll find on Virgin Atlantic A330-900neo aircraft) …
… 24 Premium Economy seats …
and 237 Economy Class seats.
Bottom line
Following a recent schedule update, ITA will now not operate its route between Rome and San Francisco between the end of October 2024 and the beginning of March 2025. If you’re booked to fly this route with ITA during the northern hemisphere winter and the airline hasn’t yet contacted you, now would be a good time to pick up the phone and have ITA accommodate you on alternative flights that fit your schedule (or give you a full refund).
United also has a nonstop flight on that route that’s suspended over the winter. Once they’re partners in Star Alliance I don’t know if they will keep both. Weird because I would think sunny southern europe would be more popular than London or Paris in the winter
My SFO flight was cancelled but ITA put me on the LAX nonstop route and now I’m thrilled!