Do you have Volare points? If you book an award ticket you get milesback (but only in August)
ITA Airways' loyalty program has launched in recent weeks the award ticket, not the ability to book a [...]
ITA Airways
Star Alliance
ITA Airways' loyalty program has launched in recent weeks the, not the ability to book a ticket using points, but the actual award ticket.
In this article:
Obviously a novelty expected since the inception of the program and who, within months of the program's expiration, had finally made Volare a full FF program.
The novelty of cashback (or milesback)
In a communication just sent to Volare members, a feature aimed at mitigating the number of Volare points required to issue an award ticket was announced.
July 10 through Aug. 10, booking an award ticket to fly by Aug. 31, You will receive back a portion of the points spent...
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The mechanism is simple: for each award ticket issued during the promotional period, you will be credited back 10% of points on domestic routes, 20% on international routes, and as much as 25% on intercontinental flights.
Is it worth taking advantage of this promotion?
As we had explained in a recent article the points back, benefit provided with American Express co-branded Cards, does not trigger if you book an award ticket, but only if you use it in cash&point mode, so this discount partially makes up for this lack.
ITA's move is certainly generous, however, it must be said that the time window is really narrow and especially since ITA award tickets are issued with dynamic pricing, making the discount for Traveling in August, which is the very high season, means that the starting price will be considerably higher.
For example, flying during the promo period to New York costs 87,200 points for economy and 282,200 for business one way. Thanks to this promotion you save 25%, but the amount of points required is really huge to detach a round-trip itinerary.
At other times, tickets cost even significantly less, precisely because the price is dynamic.
An even more glaring example is flying, during the promo period to San Francisco. On the HP Volare advertises a starting price of 66 thousand points one way.
Doing a search, the lowest price is almost 5 times higher. And the 25% discount is nothing but a small panacea.
In conclusion
Good initiative, but Honestly unless you are sleeping on several million Volare points accumulated through the generosity of the program and the constant promotions, I don't feel like recommending anyone to book at these prices unless you have a gun to your head and you have to leave and you don't want to pay for your ticket any other way.
Flying Blue, Air France's loyalty program also has dynamic pricing and fly, in August, to San Francisco has lots of dates where you can peel off economy tickets at 25k points, premium at 40k and business at 60K.
