Italy’s second largest carrier Air Italy plans to launch two new destinations in North America in summer of 2020, this will be part of an expansion to its already existing US transatlantic flight operations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and John F kennedy.
Currently the Italian carrier is having seasonal flights to both the destinations listed above in the US state of California and round the year flights to Miami and John F Kennedy.
It needs to be stressed that Air Italy has decided to launch two new additional US destinations despite heavy opposition from the major US carriers: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines Inc and United Airlines.
The Chief Operating Officer Rossen Dimitrov told FlightGlobal that Air Italy plans to launch new destinations by way of having a code share partnership with one of the US legacy airlines, information about the two new destinations and pending agreements with the concerning airports wasn’t disclosed yet. However the COO of the Italian Carrier, Rossen Dimitrov has confirmed that one of the two new destinations that are set to be launched will be operated seasonally and one of its two existing seasonal California destinations: Los Angeles and San Francisco has high potential to convert to round the year service in 2020.
Air Italy also has transatlantic flights to Toronto from Milan Malpensa, this service to Canada was introduced recently after the introduction of its seasonal flights to Los Angeles and San Francisco from Milan. It has been learnt that the Italian carrier plans to suspend its US seasonal flights later this year in favor of other destinations like Maldives, Mombasa, Tenerife and Zanzibar.
The major US airlines- American, Delta and United backed by their unions in their Partnership For Open and Fair Skies have recently initiated a campaign against non-US airlines that made it difficult for them to have flight services to US destinations.
Dimitrov says that this campaign will not impact their expansion in the US and he would like to work in tandem with one of the major US airlines by having a code share agreement and would soon unveil its new US interline partner for the new destinations.
In Dimtrov’s own words “In terms of the interline, we might be able to announce something this year as long as the work gets completed.” Since the US aviation industry is dominated by the major big 3 US airlines, Air Italy has no choice left but to choose one from America, Delta or United as its interline partner for its new transatlantic services to the US.
