ITA Airways Joining Star Alliance In 2026: Fantastic!
- Konrad Tillman
- Apr 5
- 2 min read
Intro
ITA Airways, currently part of Skyteam until April 30th, is the current flag carrier of Italy based out of Rome. Ever since the airline was founded recently, it has grown quite an extensive route network serving all six main continents, with state of the art aircraft such as the A330-900neo and the A350.
Well, as I previously reported on, ITA Airways had planned to leave Skyteam and join Star Alliance, and this has just now been approved!
The Details
Earlier this week, the Star Alliance board met to deliberate whether ITA Airways should join Star Alliance. After some deliberation (and I am guessing not that much) the verdict was that the Italian Carrier will join Star Alliance as of 2026.
With this addition to the largest airline alliance, the Star Alliance network will grow by a whopping additional 360 daily flights providing customers even more options on where and when to fly.
My Thoughts
As a primary Star Alliance flyer (I guess I have status on all three), this is extremely exciting going forward for a number of reasons.
ITA has a fantastic soft product onboard, and combining that with a mostly good hard product (minus the dated A330s (not Neos)) this will make for a great addition to the alliance.
ITA often has very reasonable fares when connecting from Europe to the USA and India. When I flew their A321Neo and A330-200 from Cairo-Rome-New York, the cost in Business Class came out to 1321.
With these good fares come some great PQP opportunities. Some of the best PQP opportunities for United fliers are cheap business class fares (especially on AC), and this will be a great way to reach status on a good carrier.
Final Thoughts
ITA Airways has just been granted approval to join Star Alliance as of 2026. While the airline will be without an alliance for 9 months, this is a huge addition to Star Alliance as they fortify that area of Europe. Going forward, this is exciting times to be a Star Alliance flyer, and I cannot wait for the Italian Carrier to be a part of it!
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