The Italian ITA Airways has big growth plans.
Since becoming part of the Lufthansa Group in January, the airline has turned a corner. It has synchronized schedules with Lufthansa and linked its Volare loyalty program with the group’s loyalty program. Miles and more. Furthermore, the carrier left the SkyTeam alliance in favor of Star Alliance and applied to join Lufthansa’s lucrative transatlantic joint venture with United Airlines and Air Canada, among other changes.
“Integration is a big challenge,” Joerg Eberhart, CEO of ITA, said Friday in an interview with TPG in New York. “Lufthansa said this will be the fastest integration the group has ever done… We are striving, Lufthansa is striving to achieve this within two years.”
In other words, ITA could be a full contributing member of the Lufthansa Group by 2027. That includes the group taking full control of the Italian airline, up from the 41% it owns today.
The recovery and integration of ITA comes at a challenging time for the Lufthansa Group. The group has lagged financially behind its main European competitors, Air France and KLM, and International Airlines Group, owner of British Airways and Iberia. In September, executives unveiled a plan to reduce costs, increase efficiency and increase centralized management in an effort to increase margins. And the integration of ITA with its strategically important hub at Rome Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport (FCO) is key to those plans.
Indeed, of all the Americas, the United States figures prominently in Lufthansa’s ambitions for the ITA.
Future United Joint Venture Partner
“The US market is the most important for us, besides the Italian domestic market,” Eberhart said.
Lufthansa and United have wasted no time seeking approval from the US Department of Transportation to include ITA in their transatlantic joint venture, known as A++. Inclusion would allow ITA to coordinate schedules and fares, jointly market and sell flights, and integrate with its partners between Europe and the United States. The pact also includes Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Swiss.
A big draw to this type of coordination is the promise of new routes and flights that airlines say are not possible without a joint venture. The downside is that travelers lose an independent competitor as the airlines in these alliances set flight prices together.
Reward your inbox with TPG’s daily newsletter
Join over 700,000 readers to receive breaking news, in-depth guides, and exclusive offers from TPG experts.
ITA and United launched a loyalty association in September.
“Us [will] “We will then try to organize the ITA network in the same way that we would have connection points with the United system,” Eberhart said.
Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) are two United hubs to which ITA would consider adding flights under an FCO joint venture, Eberhart added.
The Italian airline already operates at seven US airports, including Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD), New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Dulles International Airport (IAD) near Washington, DC, scheduling data from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows.
ITA hopes to gain U.S. approval to join the joint venture within 12 months, or by October 2026, and conduct its first joint program in the summer of 2027, Eberhart said.
Planes (and profits) could slow ITA’s expansion
There is at least one big obstacle in ITA’s growth plans: airplanes.
The airline only has 22 long-haul Airbus A330-200, A330-900 and A350-900 that can fly transatlantic routes. And the six A330-900s that ITA has on order are scheduled to replace the five older A330-200s in its fleet.
“It’s more or less an availability challenge as we want to grow our new A350 technology,” Eberhart said. “We could consider, as an alternative solution, the A330-900, but then we would need an extended range: on South American routes we need the A350, also in Japan and also on the west coast.”
Airbus lacks new A350 delivery slots until the early 2030s, and leased aircraft are prohibitively expensive, he added. Still, ITA is seeking deals on used aircraft and, when fully integrated into the Lufthansa Group, could benefit from its much larger order book.
Lufthansa is suffering its own challenges in getting new twin-aisle planes thanks to a combination of delays at major planemakers Airbus and Boeing and a delay in certification of the group’s new premium seat set, Allegris.
Then there is the question of ITA’s balance sheet. The Lufthansa Group is determined to turn the airline, a relaunched version of Italy’s historically loss-making Alitalia, into a profitable company. It reported an operating loss of 46 million euros ($54 million) in the first half of 2025 and, as Eberhart told Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra in September, notes “get very close to the balance point” in the last half of the year.
Expansion opportunities in the south
Carsten Spohr, CEO of the Lufthansa Group, previously spoke of FCO as a new gateway to Africa and Latin America for the group.
“Compared to our European competitors, we lack a center in the south, especially for the growing [origin and destination] traffic in and out of Africa and Latin America,” he said in 2021.
Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport is an important gateway to Africa for Air France and KLM, and Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD) to Latin America for IAG.
ITA is targeting Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and Lagos, Nigeria, in Africa, and Bogotá, Colombia; Lima, Peru; and Santiago, Chile, in South America for future growth, Eberhart said. However, while African destinations could be served from FCO by the airline’s fleet of premium configuration Airbus A321neos, South American expansion requires additional twin-aisle aircraft, as does US growth.
One possibility for ITA is long-range, single-aisle aircraft. The airline is testing the business case for narrow-body aircraft with a premium design on several Airbus A321neos it currently flies, including Kotoka International Airport (ACC) in Accra, Ghana, and Blaise Diagne International Airport (DSS) near Dakar, Senegal, among other airports. If they are successful, something Eberhart said they will know in 2027, ITA could consider an order for the long-range A321LR or even the Longer range A321XLR.
“We did the math: The LR could reach from Rome to the east coast of the United States,” Eberhart said. “Of course it would cover the entire Middle East [and] all sub-saharans [Africa] destinations.”
The A321XLR could fly to the US or even eastern South America from FCO in a premium, low-density design, he added.
Allegiance and alliance changes
While ITA waits for aircraft for its intercontinental expansion, the airline is advancing at a dizzying pace in its alliance loyalty and integration into the Lufthansa Group.
According to Eberhart, the airline plans to merge Volare with Miles & More at the end of February. The airline has already synchronized its earning, redemption and status qualifications with the group’s loyalty program.
As for Star Alliance, ITA aims to complete its membership in the global airline alliance in the next “six to eight months,” or by June 2026, Eberhart said. The airline left the SkyTeam alliance of which its predecessor, Alitalia, was a member for Star Alliance in February.
“We are already preparing the [Star Alliance] livery for an airplane,” Eberhart said ahead of time.
Related reading:
