Alitalia: Bite me.

The BBQ Pit
1

A magnificent Dopefest. An excellent week in LA. A sad “see you later” and lots of kisses to my sweet Shayna. So far, so good.

Now, getting home to Hamburg (via Milan) shouldn’t be much of a problem, right ? After all, Alitalia is a national carrier and should know its ass from a hole in the ground, right ? Right ? WRONG!

Making a long and highly annoying story as short as possible, this is more or less what happened:
[ul]
[li]Alitalia cancels my connecting flight from Milan to Hamburg, putting me on a later flight. 4 extra hours to wait in Milan, great.[/li][li]The later flight is delayed twice, then cancelled. No information. It’s now 21:50 local time and I’m in Milan airport. Oh joy.[/li][li]Locating the information desk (clearly marked “Check-in”), I find a grand total of five employees to reschedule four cancelled flights. I stand in line for just about two hours, magnificent. (At least there’s a few Italian tempers to provide a bit of street theatre.)[/li][li]It takes the utterly clueless girl behind the counter about 40 minutes to reroute me (through Amsterdam!) the day after. Great. It’s not as if I have work to do on Monday, oh no.[/li][li]I do, however, get a hotel voucher. Woo![/li][li]I join a crowd of about 150 people trying to get the hotel booking office in the airport to accept our vouchers and book hotels. There’s a counter, but it’s not used. All communication is shouted though a half-open office door. Vouchers are handed over by holding them in the employees’ faces and praying that they’ll take them. No information is handed out. I seriously consider sleeping in the airport instead.[/li][li]After about an hour, I get a slip of paper with a hotel name and detailed instructions in Italian. I don’t understand Italian. I mangae to follow the crowd for a bus ride to an (actually rather nice) hotel, where I grab a grand total of three hours sleep. Only after convincing the concierge that I’m NOT sharing a room with anyone, though.[/li][li]07:00 - bus ride back to the airport. The bus isn’t big enough to carry us all and cabs are frantically booked. The bus is delayed. At this point, I’m not all that surprised.[/li][li]Boarding the plane to Amsterdam is delayed. Less and less surprised.[/li][li]A crucial slip of paper (the “ticket” for the A’dam-Hamburg leg) is missing from my now rather impressive portfolio - I never got that particular slip. Not at all surprised. I communicate clearly that that’s a problem for Alitalia, not me. Frantic promises about telexes to Amsterdam are made - I remain skeptical.[/li][li]I board the plane for Amsterdam with no tickets for the last leg of the journey, but it’s at least the right direction. We wait, boarded, for about an hour - yet another event that rather completely fails to surprise me. No chance that I’ll make the connecting flight now, but as I have no ticket anyway, I resign to fate.[/li][li]I arrive in A’dam and find (surprisingly, actually) that not only am I booked on a flight to Hamburg, I’m booked for a later flight and will actually make my connection! I regret my skepticism a little.[/li][li]I arrive in Hamburg and by some miracle, my luggage arrives with me. This actually does surprise me.[/li][/ul]
In short, Alitalia: You’re off the list.

I’d rather row. Hell, I’d rather attempt to cross the Atlantic by flapping my arms. Both options are presumably faster and certain to be less aggravating.

That I trusted you to ferry my mortal coil across the Atlantic (not once, but twice) will remain one of my bigger mistakes. Bite me.

S. Norman

2

Full sympathies, old chap. I used to fly between Schiphol and Milan about 4 times a month, and Alitalia really do have an almost impressive ability to fuck up. Out of interest, was it Linate or Malpensa you were flying through?

3

I’ve flown Alitalia twice from the States to Italy and back. Nothing but good things to say about them. But there is nothing worse than having a long plane trip delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed and…
hope you had a good book.

4
  • Eonwe, had you asked me in LA I’d have been happy with Alitalia. Comfy seats and a good amount of legroom, for one thing. But seeing that screen in Milan with 25% of the flights cancelled was a bit of an eye-opener.

Gary K., I flew out of Malpensa - the one with the ground radar that works. Not a bad airport, as those go. But that is, of course, not saying much…

S. Norman

5

I travelled once with Alitalia.

On the way out they lost my baggage.
I joined a queue to report it. It seemed strange to me that there were two full-time employees working solely on lost baggage, especially as it was a small provincial airport.
But they cheerfully informed me that “this happens all the time.”

Eventually, 2 days later, my hotel found my luggage by phoning every nearby airport. They told Alitalia, who were still ‘looking’.

On the way back, the plane was late and I was worried about my connection back to the UK.
The stewardess said:
“the pilot will radio ahead to hold the plane” (he didn’t)
“there is another plane after your one” (there wasn’t)
“you will be met at checkin, and escorted to your connection” (I wasn’t)

The only reason I caught the connection was that it was late (another speciality of Alitalia).

Do not use this pathetic excuse for an airline!

6

Try Aeroflot next time. After that, you’ll be GLAD to fly Alitalia.

7

Ummm, while it sucks, and no offence meant, but have you ever heard the phrase : “you get what you pay for” ???

They are cheap for a reason…

8

Malpensa is the better of the two. At the time I was working out of an office next to Linate, but even allowing for an extra hour in the time it took to get there Malpensa would usually be the better option to fly from. Was anyone surprised that Linate would blow up their ground radar, then do nothing about it for two years?

The other rant that has to be thrown at Alitalia is the food. OK, airline food is awful at the best of times, but Alitalia is just fucking bad even by these standards. How the hell can the national airline of a nation that adores food be responsible for the crime that is “sliced mystery roadkill on a bed of green plastic salad substitute.” Even their coffee sucks.

Oh, and Chas E, I liked Aeroflot. It was the charming way the air hostesses would ask me for a cigarete in exchange for another drink.

9

Goo,

yes, good point about cheap airlines. I was booked on Alitalia by the organisation paying for my trip.
Next time I’ll upgrade myself.

Chas.E,

my mate is flying Aeroflot to get to an obscure Russian airport.
The pilot makes an announcement in Russian. Everyone else starts screaming!
And there’s my friend (who doesn’t speak the language) trying to get hysterical people to tell him what’s going on. :eek:
They landed safely.

10

I’ve flown Balkan Air (Sofia, Bulgaria -> NYC with a stop in Nairobi) with fewer problems than these. Dang.

Nice airline rant!

11

I already told my Alitalia story in another thread so I won’t repeat the whole thing here. They lost my luggage and I was in China with no luggage for two weeks. After I returned I spent several months trying to get some kind of compensation. They suck big time and they’ll never see me again. Check out http://www.alitaliasucks.com/

12

A couple of airline acronyms (there’s a bunch):

ALITALIA - Always late in takeoff, always late in arrival
ALITALIA - Airplane lands in Turin and luggage in Amsterdam

13

BTW, I read a few months ago in the news, Milan airport was the worst in Europe for delays, lost luggage etc. I wonder if it possibly could be related to Alitalia in any way…