Italy’s ITA Airways has big growth plans.

Since becoming part of the Lufthansa Group in January, the airline has pivoted. It has synced schedules with Lufthansa and linked its Volare loyalty program with the group’s loyalty program, Miles & More. Additionally, the carrier departed 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.

“The integration part is a big challenge,” Joerg Eberhart, CEO of ITA, said in an interview with TPG in New York on Friday. “Lufthansa said this will be the quickest integration the group ever did. … We are striving, Lufthansa’s striving for having this done within two years.”

In other words, ITA could be a full-fledged 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.

ITA’s turnaround and integration come at a challenging time for the Lufthansa Group. The group has lagged behind its main European competitors, Air France and KLM, and British Airways- and Iberia-owner International Airlines Group, financially. In September, executives unveiled a plan to cut costs, boost efficiency and increase centralized management in an effort to raise margins. And integrating ITA with its strategically important hub at Rome Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport (FCO) is key to those plans.

In fact, of all the Americas, the U.S. features highly in Lufthansa’s ambitions for ITA.

Future United joint venture partner

“The U.S. market is the most important market for us, besides the domestic market in Italy,” Eberhart said.

Lufthansa and United have wasted no time applying for U.S. Department of Transportation approval 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 otherwise integrate with its partners between Europe and the U.S. The pact also includes Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Swiss.

A big selling point of this kind of coordination is the promise of new routes and flights that, the airlines claim, are not possible without a joint venture. The downside is that travelers lose an independent competitor as airlines in these tie-ups jointly price flights.

ITA and United launched a loyalty partnership in September.

“We [will] try then to organize the ITA network the same way that we would have connecting points with the system of United,” Eberhart said.

Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) are two United hubs ITA would consider adding flights to under a joint venture from FCO, Eberhart added.

The Italian airline already serves seven U.S. 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, D.C., schedule data from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows.

ITA hopes to secure U.S. approval to join the joint venture within 12 months — or by October 2026 — and fly its first joint schedule in the summer of 2027, Eberhart said.

Planes (and profits) could slow ITA’s expansion

There is at least one big hitch to ITA’s growth plans: aircraft.

The airline only has 22 long-haul Airbus A330-200s, A330-900s and A350-900s that can fly transatlantic routes. And the six A330-900s ITA has on order are slated to replace the five older A330-200s in its fleet.

“It’s more or less a challenge of availability as we want to grow our new technology A350,” Eberhart said. “We might consider, as a fallback solution, the A330-900, but then we would need the extended range — South America routes we need the A350, also Japan, also the West Coast.”

Airbus lacks new A350 delivery slots until the early 2030s, and leased planes are prohibitively expensive, he added. Still, ITA is looking for used aircraft deals and, when it is fully integrated into the Lufthansa Group, could benefit from its much larger orderbook.

Lufthansa suffers from its own challenges getting new twin-aisle aircraft thanks to a combination of delays at major plane-makers Airbus and Boeing and a backlog certifying the group’s new suite of premium seats, 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 enterprise. It reported a 46 million-euro ($54 million) operating loss in the first half of 2025 and, as Eberhart told Italian daily Corriere della Serra in September, aims “to get very close to break-even” in the last half of the year.

Southern expansion opportunities

Carsten Spohr, CEO of the Lufthansa Group, has previously spoken of FCO as a new gateway to Africa and Latin America for the group.

“We are missing a southern hub compared to our European competitors, especially for the growing [origin and destination] traffic in and out of Africa and Latin America,” he said in 2021.

Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) is a major gateway to Africa for Air France and KLM, and Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD) to Latin America for IAG.

ITA is eyeing Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Lagos, Nigeria, in Africa and Bogota, Colombia; Lima, Peru; and Santiago, Chile, in South America for future growth, Eberhart said. However, while the African destinations could be served from FCO by the airline’s fleet of premium-configured Airbus A321neos, South American expansion requires additional twin-aisle jets, as does U.S. growth.

One possibility for ITA is long-range, single-aisle planes. The airline is testing the business case for narrow-body planes with a premium layout on several Airbus A321neos that it currently flies to, including Kotoka International Airport (ACC) in Accra, Ghana, and Blaise Diagne International Airport (DSS) near Dakar, Senegal, among other airports. If these prove successful, something Eberhart said they will know by 2027, ITA could consider an order for the long-range A321LR or even the longer-range A321XLR.

“We did the calculation, the LR could reach from Rome to the East Coast of the U.S.,” Eberhart said. “Of course it would cover all the Middle East [and] all of sub-Saharan [Africa] destinations.”

The A321XLR could fly deeper into the U.S. or even to eastern South America from FCO in a low-density premium layout, he added.

Loyalty and alliance changes

While ITA awaits planes for intercontinental expansion, the airline is moving forward at breakneck speed with its loyalty and alliance integration into the Lufthansa Group.

According to Eberhart, the airline plans to merge Volare into Miles & More by 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 membership in the global airline confab in the next “six to eight months” — or by June 2026 — Eberhart said. The carrier departed the SkyTeam alliance that its predecessor, Alitalia, was a member of for Star Alliance in February.

“We’re already preparing the [Star Alliance] livery for an aircraft,” Eberhart said in anticipation.

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