During the month of August, Air Italy has expanded its network signing agreements with four airlines. Indeed the airline, previously known as Meridiana, has first strengthened its partnership with Qatar Airways and Bulgaria Air expanding the already existing codeshare agreements. As of August 2, Sydney as well as Sofia has been added to Air Italy’s destination portfolio. The first will be served on a daily basis by Qatar Airways — which already operates flights between Doha and Rome Fiumicino, Milan Malpensa, Pisa and Venice, as well as Singapore and the Maldives with Air Italy’s “IG” code. At the same time, Qatar Airways currently has its “QR” code on Air Italy flights between Milan Malpensa and Rome Fiumicino, Naples, Olbia (Sardinia), Palermo and Catania (Sicily) and Lamezia Terme (Calabria), adding now the Rome Fiumicino - Olbia flights. The codeshare with Qatar Airways was first set in place in April 2017. As for the second connexion between Sofia and Rome, it joins the other connexions operated since February by Bulgaria Air with Air Italy’s “IG” code, such as Milan Malpensa and Sofia, Varna and Burgas. Besides, same as for Qatar Airways, Bulgaria Air has its “FB” code on the Italian airline’s domestic routes.

Air Italy also planned to expand its network through Special Prorate Agreements (SPA) signed with both flag carrier Finnair and EL AL Israel Airlines Ltd. The Finnish airline now makes available five of its homeland destinations — Helsinki, Turku, Oulu, Kokkola and Rovaniemi — connecting them to Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania, Lamezia Terme, Cagliari and Olbia after a stop over at Milano Malpensa while Finnair’s customers have now the opportunity to fly to Air Italy’s African destinations, traveling from Finland via Malpensa, and connect to Dakar, Lagos, Accra, Sharm El-Sheikh and Cairo.

Simultaneously, with respect to EL AL, Air Italy’s passengers arriving in Malpensa from North America will now be able to connect with EL AL to land in Tel Aviv while EL AL’s customers departing from Tel Aviv can now reach Air Italy’s North American destinations via Malpensa or connect to the Milan Malpensa-based airline’s domestic network from Malpensa to the cities of central and southern Italy such as Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania, Lamezia Terme, Cagliari and Olbia.

Air Italy Chief Operating Officer, Rossen Dimitrov, comments: “One of the key aims of Air Italy is expanding our network to offer ever more travel opportunities as well as great connectivity to our customers. To date, we have already reached a number of important milestones in this ambition, and today we are very proud to enhance the cooperation with Finnair and EL AL in addition to our partners, Qatar Airways, Bulgaria Air, Latam, Aegean Airlines, and Alaska Airlines.”

As regards Air Italy’s network expansion strategy he adds: “Moving forwards, we will continue to reinforce our partners’ network with SPA and codeshare agreements in order to offer a progressive enlargement of travelling opportunities for our loyal and expanding passenger base.”