ITA Airways, the national airline of Italy, has just put its newest transatlantic route on sale, which will represent the carrier’s first route to Canada.
In this post:
ITA Airways will fly from Rome to Toronto
As of May 10, 2024, ITA Airways will launch flights between Rome (FCO) and Toronto (YYZ). The service will initially operate 6x weekly, before operating daily as of June 1, 2024. The flight will have the following schedule:
AZ650 Rome to Toronto departing 10:15AM arriving 2:05PM
AZ651 Toronto to Rome departing 5:15PM arriving 7:50AM (+1 day)
The 4,415-mile flight is blocked at 9hr50min westbound and 8hr35min eastbound. ITA Airways intends to use an Airbus A330 for the route, with some frequencies operated by the A330-200, and others operated by the A330-900neo. The latter features a far superior hard product, so I’d recommend booking that if at all possible.
How this fits into ITA Airways’ route network
Toronto will be ITA Airways’ first destination in Canada, and complements the carrier’s seven destinations in the United States, including Boston (BOS), Chicago (ORD), Los Angeles (LAX), Miami (MIA), New York (JFK), San Francisco (SFO), and Washington (IAD).
As of now, ITA Airways is still in the SkyTeam alliance, and it’s possible to redeem Air France-KLM Flying Blue miles and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points for travel on the airline (other SkyTeam partners don’t seem to have access to the same space). However, keep in mind that Lufthansa Group intends to acquire ITA Airways, in which case the airline will likely eventually join Star Alliance.
As it currently stands, ITA Airways is taking a pretty independent approach to route planning. While the airline belongs to SkyTeam, it’s excluded from the SkyTeam transatlantic joint venture, which otherwise consists of Air France-KLM, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic.
At least ITA Airways does have some connectivity at US airports via Delta. The airline won’t have that same level of connectivity in Toronto, where the airline has no domestic partnerships. Who knows, maybe that will change over time, as I’m sure any of Air Canada’s competitors would be happy to partner with ITA.
Bottom line
Toronto will become ITA Airways’ first destination in Canada, complementing the carrier’s service to seven destinations in the United States. The new flight is already on sale, so it’s nice to see more options for Canadian travelers. ITA Airways is expanding nicely… I’m just curious to see what the future holds for the carrier’s ownership.
What do you make of ITA Airways’ expansion to Toronto?
I had a delightful RT ROM-GRU with ITA last month. To your point, the -900neo was one of the freshest feeling J experiences I'd had in a while, while the older -200(or was it -300) wreaked of ex-Alitalia. Both were pleasant enough flights though, but the first really stood out and surpassed my expectations. I love the blue livery too.
This isn’t right. ITA flights now show up on delta.com, but business flights have egregious taxes
They are at least interlining with AC and WS and selling such tickets on their website. For example, I looked at a YOW-FCO round trip via YYZ. The price in economy was a bit higher than the direct YYZ-FCO, but business was a bit cheaper. Ottawa has no SkyTeam service. When I searched from YUL, they gave connections on DL via JFK. From Calgary they offered connections on both AC and WS.
YOW has SkyTeam service with Air France to CDG, but doesn’t have any oneworld services IIRC
Yes, hopefully they will start a flight to Newark once they join( hopefully) StarAlliance.
I really hope ITA chooses Newark once it joins the star alliance!
ITA will never replace JFK with EWR but an EWR service, should they really join Star Alliance, would absolutely happen, and probably result in UA dropping one of its 2 daily flights on EWR-FCO in peak Spring/Summer season.
AZ used to operate at EWR until the mid-2010s with FCO service, on the 767-300ER.
I wish ITA can announce flights to Atlanta. Atlanta would be a great destination for ITA.
Not if ITA exits SkyTeam, which it probably would if LH takes it over, which it probably will. The building blocks for ITA in Star Alliance are sort of already there, with ORD, SFO, IAD in place but obviously, no connectivity.
Surprised there is no Texas service. Adding Houston would be a nice fit.