What is Ita Airways up to on fares to and from Fiumicino?
What are Ita Airways' commercial strategies? What are the ticket pricing policies? Are there more favored cities? An in-depth analysis by Cristiano Spazzali, an air transport expert, on the rates applied by Ita on national destinations to and from Rome Fiumicino
After the recent communication of the introduction of the surcharge for eco-sustainable fuel which will be applied by almost all airlines that use Saf biofuel starting from 2025, the concern of consumer associations has shifted to the expensive tickets of carriers operating in Italy and in particular on the national airline Ita Airways which is the largest domestic operator at Rome Fiumicino.
Start Magazine commissioned Cristiano Spazzali, a commercial aviation expert, consultant and former general manager of Azzurraair who has been following the ITA Airways dossier for some time now, to carry out research to understand the tariffs applied by Ita on national destinations to and from Rome Fiumicino with same-day return flight during the week and with the option of returning the following day to monitor the various price differences.
Another parallel investigation was also conducted on the north-south routes operated during weekends (Saturday-Sunday) to better understand the dynamics of the fare policies applied by the national airline.
Sweep them, explain to us with which criteria this analysis was conducted.
On June 30, all domestic destinations for Rome Fiumicino on a day of the week, for example Tuesday or Wednesday and returning on the same day, were taken into consideration. The same work was then also done for the return on the day immediately following departure. The times are between 06.00 and 08.00 in the morning for departure and 17.00 and 22.00 for the return. The fare taken into consideration is by far the lowest available, non-refundable and without checked baggage.
And what emerges from this investigation?
From this analysis it clearly emerges that Ita is applying a very fragmented pricing policy which apparently does not follow any commercially logical thread. It's a policy that is unbalanced and tends to provide greater fare advantages to travelers departing from some cities at the expense of others. It seems that the intent is to intercept a passenger with a high economic value while leaving out those with a lower economic value. In short, Ita would be depriving itself of a good portion of turnover coming from the middle class considered uninteresting and which would require a total revision of the tariffs, and to make money it is mainly aiming at its regular travellers, making them pay, especially during the summer season , decidedly less advantageous prices. With this policy the risk is of not being able to fill the airplanes and of leaving a good 25% of turnover on the ground.
And does this apply to all cities?
Absolutely not. As I was saying, there are cities that are very advantaged by the rates that Ita applies on its flights, other cities much less so. Going from North to South for example, we can note that if we needed to leave with two days' notice, for example on July 3rd with return on the same day, the lowest return fare is that for a Genoa-Rome, at modest sum of almost 615.00 euros, followed by the cities of Trieste in the north where for a direct flight to Fiumicino the cost is 575.00 euros while starting from Venice the price drops "slightly" to 531.00 euros. The cities in the North that most benefit from the fare benefits of Ita Airways flights are Turin and Bologna where a direct flight to Fiumicino costs 217.00 euros and 254.00 euros respectively.
Has anything changed in the Center and the South?
Here too there are strong distinctions between town and city. For example, where there is competition on the Palermo-Rome and Catania-Rome routes where Aeroitalia also operates, for a same-day return trip, again on 3 July the lowest fare applied by Ita is 158.00 euros and 296 euros respectively. .00 euros. If we then leave from Brindisi or Bari for Rome Fiumicino on the same date, the lowest fare is 619.00 euros on the Brindisi-Rome route and 514.00 euros on the Bari-Rome route and 444.00 euros on the Reggio-Rome route.
In the following weeks, however, the rates improve..
Certainly yes, but always with some distinctions. If we take a same-day return flight, for example on July 9th, the lowest fare we find for example in Trieste for a flight to Rome Fiumicino is 550.00 euros, and it is the lowest of all those available. The city that enjoys the best fare compared to all the other cities is Bologna where a same-day return flight to Rome in the same period is 135.00 euros. While in the South Bari always suffers with a ticket cost of 414.00 euros while the most advantageous fare in the South is the Palermo-Rome ticket with 144.00 euros return on the same day.
During the weekend, however, the rates are very different, what exactly?
In this case all the cities of the North and the center were taken, therefore Turin, Genoa, Venice, Trieste, Bologna and Florence and they were connected with a city in the South, stopping at Rome Fiumicino and the destination with a high traffic index that is Catania. The weekend, therefore departure on Saturday and return on Sunday, includes times between 06.00 and 08.00 in the morning for departure and 15.00 and 18.00 for the return. In this case the fare applied is always the lowest non-refundable and with baggage included which weighs approximately 70 euros per passenger. There was no shortage of surprises here too. For example, Florentines can rest assured because a weekend in Taormina just for the flight will not cost them less than 480.00 euros unless they decide to leave from Pisa with a low cost and direct flight and where the average fare on 3 consecutive weekends it is 550.00 euros return. The big cities, on the other hand, are saved if we can say so with average fares ranging from 330.00 euros for a Turin-Catania, to 400.00 euros for a Venice-Catania.
Could anything change in the future with Lufthansa compared to the rates that ITA applies today?
I really hope so. If you think that today for a Trieste-New York flight operated by Lufthansa the return price is 675.00 euros, almost like the lowest cost of the Genoa-Rome flight on 3 July, there is a contradiction in terms. If we then delve deeper into the topic, we see that the Rome Fiumicino destination has an average fare in the periods examined which is very high, we are talking about a domestic worker with an average one-way fare of over 135.00 euros. If we think that for example the Trieste-Rome route on 3 July has the lowest one-way fare which is 287.00 euros with ample availability of seats, we understand how the fares are not entirely aligned. In my opinion, the problem is also the airplanes that are used to operate these destinations; larger capacity planes would be needed at least on morning flights to be able to create a more adequate fare policy. For example, if today I check the availability on the Genoa-Rome flight on 3 July, ITA is selling that return flight at the price of 854.00 Euros, while on the Trieste-Rome return flight on 3 July the fare has risen to 605. .00 euros.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/ita-airways-tariffe/ on Tue, 02 Jul 2024 18:41:24 +0000.