Flying survives another 3 months, better wake up and start thinking how to use points

Friday afternoon Flying, ITA Airways' frequent flyer, Has finally shed light on his future, or rather took time sPosting the expiration date from 12/31/25 to March 30, 2026.

The regulations have been updated and the life of the program, points and statuses have been extended at least now all registered users of Volare have been directly notified of the expiration of points, it is already a first achievement.

Will a new status match come from Lufthansa?

First of all, it should be clarified that as of today and unless extended, until 12/31 you can always join the Miles&More status match open to all Volare members. There are, however, users who could not join, simply because they had already taken advantage of level parity in M&M in the past, and others who with the early 2026 flights, taking advantage of the fact that ITA will not reset qualifying points, could move up a level and thus have the opportunity to get a better card in the German FF.

Coming to the question it is impossible to know whether LH will extend the initiative or activate another mode to "recover" any ITA users left stranded.

Will qualifying/prize flying points be "migrated" to Miles&More?

Those who decide to still enter their Volare card for flights beginning 2026 should know, at present, there is no provision for any kind of communicating vessel between the two programs for the points issue. However, there are two different situations:

1. Qualifying Flying Points, in this case LH could (easily) and without any problem retrocredit flights for status purposes. As is well known in the M&M program the crediting of Points, QPoints and HON Circle Points.s is done on a route/cabin basis unlike ITA where price matters first. This action would not have any kind of cost for LH other than the time to apply the automatism, it would be a kind of new status match.
2. Flying Reward Points, This is where things get complicated and is the real stumbling block that has slowed the whole thing down in recent months. The dots are money, a claim that each passenger has on the program and a debt that the company, which wholly controls FF, has on its balance sheet. This may sound trivial, but it is not. What this means is that moving points from Volare to Miles&More would mean taking a debt out of ITA's coffers and placing it in Lufthansa's, but since ITA's owner is still the Italian government this is not a simple matter.

Will further renewal be possible?

Technically yes, by Italian law the maximum duration of a loyalty program is 5 continuous years, Volare was born on October 15, 2021 could extend until October 15, 2026. This is the underlying problem with loyalty programs in Italy and how companies have always exploited this peg in the folds of regulations to their advantage. This time, however, Volare has included some specific references to the use of points in the regulations that would suggest a peremptory deadline.

The distinction between the two expiration dates on the use of points was previously not present. In the previous version of the regulations, points could be used by January 31 in any mode, but this time there are two distinctions:

1. By March 30 if you want to use them for tickets or ancillary services
2. By April 3rd, you are you want to move them to trading partners

Which card makes sense to use

With this extension I believe that Volare has gone into "Soft Closing" mode, a controlled closure in which the program encourages users to use points while facilitating the accumulation on the Miles&More card. This is an attempt to get to the end of March with the least number of unused points, which then would be any company's dream: to close the last budget without debt and "rocks" to deal with.

Notwithstanding the fact that several AZ ticket sales classes do not generate any accumulation on the Miles&More card my advice is to credit everything on the German loyalty program card.

What will happen on March 30

The date may have been chosen precisely because of the concurrence with the beginning of the Summer aeronautics, which will begin on March 29. The adoption of Miles&More could also coincide with ITA joining the Star Alliance, if not at 100% at least legally and slowly then sign all the contracts with the various companies.

At the end of the day the problem will be more of ITA passengers enrolled in other loyalty programs than ITA passengers aboard other SA carriers, the former could "lose" AZ flights, while the latter would smoothly accumulate on M&M the flights made on Turkish, ANA or Singapore Airlines.

In conclusion

We are in the final stages, barring any catastrophic scenarios: Lufthansa not completing the acquisition of ITA Airways. Miles&More will become from next spring the main loyalty program for all Italians. So better start studying the German loyalty program and apply for the Mastercard Gold Miles&More and start earning miles with everyday spending

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