A few days ago I received yet another email from the Mille Miglia program which was once the Alitalia Frequent Flyer program but has since morphed into a zombie since the airline has been wound down.
The program even went to elaborate lengths to design a new website to solicit customers to use the scheme as a bank for loyalty affiliations which for obvious reasons (lack of airline backing) has outlived its usefulness.
When Alitalia finally went under so did the original version of the Mille Miglia program as the official frequent flyer program but the scheme itself stuck around and continues to operate to this day.
In the meanwhile the actual flight operations of Alitalia were transferred to a new airline called ITA which then started it’s own, official FFP the Volare Program where former Alitalia members even received a generous status match to Volare.
So what exactly is this MilleMiglia zombie still doing? Let’s have a look at their website.
With MilleMiglia Community, travelling is an ongoing event!
Earn miles with your everyday flights, stays, and trips. But also when using our Commercial Partner’s products and services! And then there are always special offers for additional bonus miles.
What can you do with the miles earned?
It’s simple. You can now ask for vouchers to offset against other air tickets, travel via the dedicated portal in collaboration with Lastminute.com, book your next hotel or hire a car during your next relaxing weekend!
But other rewards on their way, to get you to travel even more!
Stay tuned!
So the loyalty currency one earns can then be exchanged into some form of voucher a lastminute.com operated travel portal.
From the information on the Travel section members can still earn miles with the following airlines:
- Air France
- Air Europa
- KLM
- Middle East Airlines
Members can also earn miles when renting a car from Avis and Maggiore as well as booking hotels through said designated travel portal.
This would be the same portal where the collected rewards can be exchanged through. Here is one of their reward options for 86,000 miles – a 250 Euro voucher:
It doesn’t take a genius or someone who is well versed in the world of loyalty to see that this entire system is a bunch of rubbish and completely unworkable.
Not only that but I don’t see a single reason why someone would even continue collecting any kind of loyalty currency with a program like this? You can easily sign up with a real frequent flyer program, be it of the new ITA or another SkyTeam program.
Another question I’m asking myself is who is bankrolling the operation of this? It’s apparent that Mille Miglia has become a gig of someone who ended up with the rights to keep the MM program running and they have cooked up this rather strange system with less than ten partners to collect a loyalty currency which can then be redeemed for rather low value vouchers. What’s the endgame here?
Conclusion
The Mille Miglia program that was once the frequent flyer program of (now defunct) Alitalia has survived and is currently sleepwalking around as a loyalty program with a handful of partners without a specific mission.
Their website reveals a very limited option of where points can be collected (earning rates omitted too) and it doesn’t show any worthwhile way of engaging in this form of loyalty scheme.
Despite the program no having any clear path, MM is regularly sending emails to existing members that they’re still alive and kicking. It goes without saying that there is no way I’d recommend to credit even a single transaction to this program. Air Berlin’s topbonus has tried for some time to survive without the airline backing them as well but eventually the whole system went under. No surprise there!
