On Monday 12 November 2001, Alitalia and Air France inaugurate their alliance on flights between France and Italy, thereby implementing the bilateral agreement signed on 27 July 2001, after negotiations started last spring.
This commercial partnership between Alitalia and Air France will enable the two airlines to step up capacity and improve services offered to customers, both on passenger and cargo routes.

The partnership is also built around the joint commitment to develop a “multi-hub” system, based at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Europe`s most efficient hub, Rome-Fiumicino and Milan-Malpensa. These hubs, at the heart of a dense route network, offers customers more than 64,000 weekly connecting opportunities, and form a strong pole to deal with competition from other European airlines.
Alitalia and Air France will, as from 12 November:
* operate all their flights between Italy and France on a code-share basis.
The two airlines will offer 82 daily flights between Italy and France and will codeshare on all flights between Paris and Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin, Venice, Verona ; Lyon and Bologna, Milan, Rome, Venice ; Milan and Clermont-Ferrand, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Strasbourg, Toulouse ; Nice and Rome ; Turin and Clermont-Ferrand.
* offer reciprocal frequent flyer programmes.

Alitalia and Air France passengers who are members of Air France`s Fréquence Plus
and/or Alitalia`s MilleMiglia programmes, can earn Miles on the two partner airlines` flights which can be exchanged for reward tickets on both airlines.

Moreover, after signing an agreement with SkyTeam on 27 July 2001, Alitalia has been using the entire range of Alliance products since 1st November 2001. Thanks to the arrival of Alitalia, SkyTeam customers now benefit from 869 additional daily flights to 21 new destinations in 6 countries. With approximately 8,000 flights, SkyTeam and Alitalia serve more than 500 destinations in 120 countries. Complimentary access to 330 lounges worldwide is offered to all SkyTeam passengers traveling in international first or business class, or to any SkyTeam Elite Plus frequent flyer, regardless of travel class, on same day of travel.

Alitalia boasted turnover of 5.46 billion euros in the calendar year 2000. It has its own fleet of 166 aircraft and flies to 119 destinations worldwide.

Air France operates a fleet of 365 aircraft (including 127 regional aircraft). With its own aircraft, Air France flies to 208 destinations in 91 countries, generating turnover of 12.3 billion euros in the year 2000-2001 (April to March). Air France is the third largest airline in the world for international passenger transport, and fourth for international cargo transport.
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