Lufthansa’s move into ITA Airways is not just a commercial story. It is an operational change that will affect line pilots, dispatchers, maintenance crews, and the people who have to keep flights safe every day. With Lufthansa taking a 41 percent stake in ITA and integration steps already under way, the airlines are moving from commercial alignment to operational alignment. That transition creates both safety opportunities and avoidable hazards if not managed deliberately.

A quick operational snapshot matters before we get into the mitigation steps. ITA has built an all-Airbus fleet strategy that includes A220s, A320-family types, A330-900neo, and A350-900 widebodies. ITA is also planning a program of fleet renewal and growth aimed at next-generation aircraft through 2030, with closer technical and scheduling ties to the Lufthansa Group.

Why fleet harmonization is tempting from a safety and efficiency perspective

  • Common manufacturer types reduce parts variety, maintenance complexity, and training fragmentation compared with a mixed-manufacturer mix. Where crews and engineers can leverage common systems logic and shared documentation, human performance is easier to standardize.
  • A coordinated fleet plan can improve reliability by allowing planned spares pools, common spares contracts, and centralized reliability analysis across the group.

Those are concrete advantages. But commercial harmony does not automatically equal operational harmony. Here are the safety risks I have seen on the flight deck and in the hangar when two carriers bring different cultures and procedures together.

Key safety risks during harmonization

1) Fragmented procedures and SOPs When carriers merge networks quickly, standard operating procedures can diverge. Slight differences in callouts, stabilized approach criteria, briefing formats, or diversion decision authority create confusion at high workload times. Those small mismatches are exactly the kind of thing that produces runway excursions, unstable approaches, or missed briefings in real operations.

2) Training bandwidth and simulator access Type training and differences in recurrent syllabi create pinch points. If ITA crews need to be trained on group-standard procedures or if group crews need transitional training to operate with ITA-specific cabin or systems features, simulator availability becomes a hard constraint. Shortcuts or abbreviated syllabi risk degrading skills, particularly for high risk items such as upset recovery, terrain awareness, or complex failure management.

3) Mixed maintenance practices and continuing airworthiness Even with an all-Airbus fleet, differences in maintenance philosophies, vendor contracts, and troubleshooting flows can cause delays and confusion. If engineering revisions, deferred defect policies, or component replacement limits are not harmonized, dispatch decisions become inconsistent and may place unacceptable judgment burdens on local teams.

4) Crew rostering and fatigue risk Network integration often forces deeper crew pooling across bases. Without aligned fatigue risk management processes and mutual recognition of roster limits and reserve policies, crews face unpredictable duty lengths and commute patterns. Fatigue is a known safety threat that multiplies the impact of any technical or procedural lapse.

5) Interoperability of safety management and data systems Safety benefit comes from shared data. But if flight data monitoring, technical reliability databases, and occurrence reporting systems do not interoperate, the group cannot see trends across operators. That blind spot delays corrective action and allows small problems to grow.

Practical mitigations I would push for immediately

These are concrete, pilot-centric actions that management and regulators can insist on to keep the integration safe.

1) Publish and lock a set of harmonized SOPs for core phases of flight Create a mandatory SOP common core for stabilized approach, go-around criteria, briefings, CRM callouts, approach minima, diversion decision authority, and fuel contingency management. Allow limited local addenda for legitimate airport or regulatory differences but require formal deviation approvals.

2) Joint recurrent training pools and simulator-sharing agreements Set up cross-company simulator blocks dedicated to conversion and line-oriented flying training. Prioritize full procedural flows and non-normal management rather than checklist reading. Where possible, use reciprocal simulator access across the group so training capacity is not a bottleneck.

3) Unified dispatch and MEL policy alignment Harmonize Minimum Equipment List tolerances and dispatch release criteria so that dispatchers and flight crews use the same go-no-go rules. Create a single technical control process for widebody pooling and shared spares that gives local teams clear escalation pathways.

4) Fatigue risk management integration Mutual recognition of rostering rules, reserve policies, and fatigue reporting must be implemented before deep crew pooling. Publish clear rules for cross-base pairing to avoid sudden changes in commuting patterns.

5) One safety data fabric Integrate flight data monitoring, technical reliability, and occurrence reporting so the group can spot systemic issues early. That means shared definitions, anonymized cross-analysis where appropriate, and agreed thresholds for immediate operational action.

6) Transitional operational restrictions where risk is highest Use conservative mitigations early. For example, restrict mixed-operator pairings on complex long-haul sectors during the first 12 months of integration, or require augmented crew for selected routes until reliability metrics meet agreed thresholds.

7) Invest in human factors and cultural alignment Operational safety is human-first. Joint safety conferences, line training visits, and embedded exchange programs build trust more effectively than memos.

Regulatory and oversight considerations

National and European regulators need to treat this as more than a commercial transaction. Authorities should require documented harmonization plans and milestone-based approvals for cross-crew operations, changes to continuing airworthiness management, and expanded ETOPS or long-haul pooling. Transparency on training syllabi and shared safety metrics will help regulators avoid surprise exposures.

Bottom line for operational teams

From the cockpit, the technical pieces are solvable. Most of ITA’s fleet already aligns on Airbus platforms which helps. The danger is procedural drift and training shortfalls during rapid commercial integration. If the group focuses first on harmonizing core SOPs, training availability, and safety data, the business benefits of a larger combined network will not come at the cost of avoidable safety risk. Operational leadership must be deliberate, resourced, and measured when they move crews and aircraft across the new combined network. Do that and you get the efficiency benefits. Skip it and you pay with incidents that could have been prevented.

References and reporting on the integration and fleet plans are available from public reporting on Lufthansa’s acquisition and integration steps and ITA’s fleet and business plan announcements.