Lufthansa Group will exercise a purchase option to become the majority owner of Italian carrier ITA Airways.
The airline group, which has held a 41% stake in ITA since January 2025, intends to bring its ownership stake up to 90%. The cost of the additional 49% of the airline will be a previously agreed upon price of 325 million euros.
Lufthansa has set the first quarter of 2027 as its target for closing the transaction, pending regulatory approval from competition authorities, most notably the European Union and the Justice Department.
The seller, the Italian government, will retain a 10% share of ITA.
"Following the acquisition of the first 41% stake in ITA Airways last year, we promised the fastest airline integration in our history. We aimed to complete all major integration steps into the Lufthansa Group within just 18 months," CEO Carsten Spohr said in a prepared remark. "We have not only kept this promise, we were even faster: All customer-facing interfaces are already integrated today -- with the exception of North Atlantic flights, where, as is well known, regulatory approval for our merger is still pending."
The Justice Department has yet to approve incorporation of ITA into the United/Lufthansa/Air Canada joint venture partnership.
ITA joined Star Alliance in April. Lufthansa Group has also incorporated the airline into its Miles and More loyalty program and has set up unified booking, sales and fare systems with its other carriers.
ITA would be the fifth network airline in which Lufthansa Group has a controlling stake, joining Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines.