AlicorporateUK

During an event in Rome last night (this was specially arranged by Alitalia for the travel trade), the new chief commercial officer (Mr Lazzerini, former Emirates' country manager in Italy) said that a new program will soon be launched. It isn't clear, though, whether he perhaps meant a full rebranding or just some sort of agreement with AZ Loyalty (owned by Etihad) in order to continue along the current path. He also said that there will be new long-haul routes in the months to come and that he has "joined to stay [for the long term]", as he "would have been a fool to leave Emirates" [had he not believed in Alitalia's future]. Going back to MilleMiglia, I guess we shall wait and see what happens on that front.

G

AirCub1

Very much looking forward to seeing what the relaunch will be. Hopefully there will be some incentives to keep those of us who have the higher tier statuses loyal!

TProphet

The likely result of MileMigglia is the same as happened to airBerlin customers. If you have these miles, the smart thing to be doing right now is using them any way possible for partner flights (not flights on Alitalia).

irishguy28

They're probably going to roll topbonus into Millemiglia (both owned by the same company!) so that all those Germans have something to spend their miles on...meaning even worse availability through the new "TopMiglia" than the current scheme

Also with no Skyteam redeeming/earning (for the MilleMiglia people) and no oneworld redeeming/earning (for the topbonus people)

irishguy28

I'm not so sure that is the smartest way to use flights. Redemption on partners are far more expensive than on Alitalia, so it's better to use Alitalia for flights, wherever possible. If Alitalia/Millemiglia fails, then you won't get to travel on those Alitalia flights. But in that scenario, you still wouldn't get to travel on those partner flights either, had you spent the extra miles - once AZ/MM is gone, so too do all future unused tickets issued by AZ/MM.

Booking partner flights in the future may also be problematic, should AZ/MM surive but end up outside of Skyteam and/or Etihad Airways Partners. Tickets issued on airlines that, by the time of the flght are no longer partners, may not end up being honoured. Given the huge changes that are likely in such a scenario, you can't assume a sold iron-cast guarantee that booking flights on, say, Air France for Summer 2018, your ticket would remain valid, even if some new form of MilleMiglia survives the forthcoming changes.

If you want to use your miles for flights, I would advise travel in September/October. Otherwise, I would be looking more towards using the MilleMiglia gallery to order something.

AlicorporateUK

AlicorporateUK

As per Sciamano's post in the other thread, the program is now officially back with Alitalia and it seems that it will soon switch to revenue based (source: Alitalia's CBO).

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Sciamano

I also guess EY will exit from the multicarrier table