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Alitalia successor airline

Andrew

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Reuters story:


A new corporation is to take the place of the current Alitalia parent company, with the name ITA. It hasn't been clear if it would keep the Alitalia brand name. Note from the story:
The statement said Alitalia would stop operating on Oct. 15 and that all passengers holding Alitalia tickets to travel after that date would be offered alternatives.
 
What a mess! We are supposed to fly Alitalia to Italy on October 7 and return October 22, with business class award tickets. Worse, we have a second award trip booked for March 2022.

I’ve been on hold with Alitalia for an hour. No idea what will happen now. Lots online about jobs, number of planes, route changes, etc., but I haven’t seen any clear details about what will happen to people who are supposed to fly on or after October 15.

UGH!!
 
This is what I wrote here four years ago, and unfortunately not much has changed :

"Alitalia is the airline equivalent of Schrodinger's cat : both alive and dead at the same time. ;)
After they left us stranded all night during a wildcat strike, they are certainly a dead entity for me."

We vowed after that strike to never fly Alitalia again - I hope they have improved their service, but something tells me that there will always be doubts about their reliability.
 
We’ve had good results with Alitalia over the years. 80,000 miles round-trip for business class is tough to beat. I finally got through to them this morning only to learn they do not know anything right now. Supposedly, some official information will be available very soon.
 
Some stories say that the new airline ITA will from the beginning fly Rome and Milan to New York, and Rome to Boston and Miami; if you're on one of those routes, that's hopeful, but one can always worry about protecting Business awards. This story in Italian puts some doubt into it: I have pretty good Italian, but this gets into technicalities of business law making it difficult: I gather they say there are some challenges to ITA taking over Alitalia's assets and liabilities, including issued tickets.
 
We’ve had good results with Alitalia over the years. 80,000 miles round-trip for business class is tough to beat.
Well, that's good to hear. Perhaps our experience was just a tough break...but I believe that also others have had less than optimal service from them.
 
I also saw an Italian news report saying that ITA balked at buying MilleMiglia because of the 220 million euro price tag Alitalia was asking for.

I guess I’ll be spending a lot of time calling Alitalia this week. Rebooking on a Skyteam partner with the MM miles may be the answer, but the rates are awful: 50,000 miles one-way for economy, 100,000 for business. We shall see.
 
I don't know if you've seen this Corriere article over several short pages. Page 5 suggests that if you have a ticket number starting with 055 issued by Alitalia you're entitled to a cash refund, even if it's a reward ticket. Page 7 says that if the miles are in your account they can't be converted to money. It all appears that the oucome in your case isn't known yet.
 
Thanks Andrew. Very interesting, and more detailed than any else I’ve seen. I’m assumed the miles would be credited back to my MM account, and I’d just have to try to see if I can book with a SkyTeam partner. The possibility of having the miles credited into a different frequent flyer account is interesting.

“i punti MilleMiglia potrebbero essere per esempio caricati — se previsto dai patti — sui programmi fedeltà di Air France o Klm o Delta Air Lines. A quel punto poi successivamente potrebbe riscattare il viaggio premio con i programmi di quelle compagnie.”
 
From an Airliners discussion, a note in Spanish to Argentine travel agents saying ITA will start selling tickets on Aug. 15, Alitalia bookings for after Oct. 15 will be cancelled, and Mille Miglia miles will be worthless; until Oct. 15 they can be used to book travel on SkyTeam partners, but I expect there's a problem if it's for travel after Oct. 15: an award ticket is typically controlled by the airline whose program it is, and what if it's a defunct airline?
 
Early Monday morning, Alitalia cancelled both legs of our October trip - even the flight scheduled before their shutdown. It keeps getting worse. Finally got through to AZ this morning. First bad news, no partner awards availability to get us to Italy in October. Second, since Alitalia hasn’t officially cancelled our March 2022 trip, we cannot get those miles back. Unbelievably at this time, they are citing MilleMiglia awards rules: if the passenger cancels the award trip the miles are lost! The agent had no information about when AZ might decide on the March flights, but said they are working on something.

Two weeks ago, I contacted one of the Italian journalists who has been reporting this story. He has been incredibly gracious and responsive. His latest advice is to wait for the Italian government to step in and protect the passengers with the 100 million € fund that has been set aside. The Ministry handling this is still working on the details.
 
Rather than worry about those Alitalia award miles being held hostage, my wife and I decided to act boldly!! On Friday, we started looking at other ways to preserve the October vacation.

I’ve transferred AMEX MR points a few times to Aeroplan/Air Canada to fly Swiss. Amazingly, Swiss had business class seats available for our dates and open jaw itinerary (BOS-VCE, FCO-BOS). It was quite nice to be able to configure the open-jaw online, something that is not possible with Alitalia. The website kept kicking me out though, making me log back in over and over. I tried on a PC and an iPad. No luck getting through by phone, so when we finally reached the payment screen I crossed my fingers and transferred the points from AMEX. They appeared in seconds, I made the purchase, and we now have tickets with Swiss.

We have our itinerary planned and reservations made - Venice, Bologna, San Gimignano, Rome. Now the really fun part, deciding on restaurants and wineries.
 
One place I discovered for the first time in Venice last week was Vineria all’Amarone. A casual place with interesting wine tasting flights. We only sat outside the several times we stopped by so don't even know what the interior is like.
 
We did enjoy the food as well and "discovered" it from Monica Ceserato's Live in Venice Week series 2 months ago where she interviewed the author / Ca' Foscari professor Gregory Dowling there. Here are the appetizers from our first tasting series - Bruschetta Classica [partially eaten] and Proscuitto & Melon [very good according to my husband who can eat this every day when in Italy]. We found the ingredients of high quality.
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Wonderful place. Thanks for reminding us. A collection of Amarone to dream about! We were there 3 years ago, at the start of our last vacation. We liked the Gini Soave we tried so much we visited the winery a couple of days later.
 
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I have to admit to always being challenged to find many places I would recommend in Venice. My husband and I prefer the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Lazio to that of Venice in general. The best meals I've had over the years have been at Enoteca ai Artisti. It is a small place with a very small, frequently changing, menu. It is normally 4 antipasti, 4 primi, 4 secondi + desserts. I did not eat there this last trip as my husband who is a bit "selective" on what he will eat did not like any of the selections for either antipasti or secondi. If they have at least 2 courses we like we always eat there. We eat regularly at Al Giardinetto da Severino where they have a nice outdoor eating area, a menu we both can find multiple options for each course that are decent, and good service. We like Cantina Arnaldi for wine and a light bite to eat. This trip their food selection wasn't quite as large as in the past but their meat & cheese platters are quite good partly because they are happy to customize them for you and really want to make sure you get something you like (for my husband no blue cheese, no goat cheese, definitely proscuitto, etc.). This time they had a really nice yellow pepper sauce that they made as part of it. They introduced me to Recioto della Valpolicella years ago which we explored further at Vineria all’Amarone. I'd love to hear suggestions from others as well.

A couple more: Estro where we ate a few times in 2019. Good food/wine but small menu which is different every trip. For drinks/cicchetti El Sbarlefo which has 2 locations - one near San Pantalon and one near Santi Apostoli.
 
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We’ve stayed just up the calle from the Cannaregio location of El Sbarlefo for three of our Venice trips. After check-in it was the go-to spot for our first bite of food in Venice. We have switched to a different hotel for the upcoming jaunt, so there will be a 4 minute walk there instead of 10 seconds - but our plan is still to have our first bites there. I am embarrassed to say I did not know about the Dorsoduro location.

Eating well in Venice does require more research and planning than just about anywhere else in the country. In addition to various Italian websites and the Osterie d’Italia guide, I’ve spent lots of time on Chowhound. That website underwent a major change a few years ago and is not what it used to be, but there are still quite a few people posting who are passionate and knowledgeable about dining in Italy. For obvious reasons, unfortunately, there is a dearth of up-to-date information right now.
 

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