A bad company with a good reward programme (Alitalia Club MilleMiglia)

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Product:	Alitalia Club MilleMiglia
Date:	22/11/02 (69 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: can fly one destination, back from another

Disadvantages: Most flight originate form Italy

Before deciding to join Dooyoo, I used this site to read ops and get informations.

I realized there already quite a few ops on Alitalia as a carrier, but not on their reward scheme.

I have been a membre of Millemiglia for 3 years now.

I will review Alitalia separately, but for the time being, suffici it to say that I deem the best reward scheme the one with British Midland, while I like very much to fly with British Airways and I equally find their scheme enticing, but there are some catches.

As far as Alitalia is concerned, the major flaw of their reward scheme is that...you have to fly with them to get points. It is not a joke, I am serious. Their service is bad, they are late too many times for my like. But their reward scheme is good and they fly to some destinations in South America, like Brazil and Argentina for competitive rates/points.

You get 1200 miles for a return flight to Italy and you need between 16 and 20,000 miles to redeem a flight to destinations like Poland, Algeria, for example.

The good thing about this scheme is that, as long as you fly within the same sector, you can fly to one destination and come back from another.

Recently I decided to go to the South of Poland to meet friends. I flew to Warsaw, then went South, and we went back to Italy from Prague. The only catch, problem is that probably most of those reading this are based in UK. In my case, I was already in continental Europe, and I had to go to Italy for work, so my company agreed to payfor me to go from Lyon to Milan. From there I went to Poland witht he airmiles, went back from Prague and then my company paid my return flight to London from Pisa.

You can give anyone you wish a ticket as a present witht he Alitalia miles, I mean, you can use these miles to give someone else a ticket as a present (unless you intend to charge them, may be your mother in law?).

Even if the person flying is membre of the hi
ghest reward class, like the Executive Gold member with BA, Alitalia will not offer you an upgrade to business subject to availability. This is something BMI do, instead, and if you go on long journey, the difference may be significant.

Overall, as I said, the main problem is that to get miles you will have to fly Alitalia. You can also get miles at hilton Hotel, each time you stay there, or on Europcar, and also convert the miles form nearly all the major Hotel chains, but this is never to convenient, I found. Better use these miles to stay at these hotels.

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