Italy’s Largest Airline Alitalia To End All Operations And Be Replaced By ITA On October 15

After years of bankruptcy, Alitalia airline’s era is finally ending on 15th October 2021. Despite being the nation’s flagbearer and the 12^th largest airline in Europe, serving more than 100 locations worldwide, Alitalia’s bankruptcy has finally brought the once-famous airline in Europe to its death bed. 

Following their upcoming end of the business, the company made it clear it will cancel all flights booked for dates later than 15^th October 2021 and facilitate a full refund for all the canceled flight bookings. 

Alitalia’s decision to end their almost 75 years of air travel business followed their longstanding business losses that started worsening in 2017, bringing the airline to its breakoff point during the pandemic. 

However, the Italian government announced replacing the outgoing Alitalia with a state-owned airline, Italia Trasporto Aereo (ITA), launched on 24th August 2021. The new airline will take over the airport slots formally used by Alitalia.

ITA will also buy part of Alitalia’s assets, including branding and 52 planes out of the 104 pre-Covid fleets owned by Alitalia. 

The state-owned ITA launched its flight ticket bookings on 26th August 2021, before its official flight commencement on 15^th October 2021. 

Unlike the crumbling Alitalia with over 100 fleets of airplanes serving over 100 locations across the world, the new outfit will begin its commercial flights with a 52-fleet acquired from Alitalia. It will fly most of the routes, followed by the collapsed Alitalia. 

Transitioning to a New Air Travel Era—what’s the implication to passengers

While ITA seems a new version of Alitalia, all the canceled tickets will not be valid on ITA. Therefore, all the affected passengers should apply for a separate ticket on ITA, should they still wish to fly the same route after Alitalia ends business. 

Those with canceled air tickets have two options to deal with the upcoming flight transition: rebook their flight to the original destination without paying an extra fee on ITA, reschedule their booking earlier, or get a full refund on their ticket. However, changing the original flight destination may incur additional costs.