In July 2003, I was denied boarding on an Alitalia flight from Caracas (CCS) to Milan (MXP) due to excessive overbooking, so I was bumped to another flight of the following day.
I understand that many companies overbook flights but in the past, when I had come across this type of problem, the airlines usually offer compensation for voluntarily change to another flight of a different airline, and in general, departing on the same day. In this case, not only Alitalia did not offer any compensation whatsoever, but they also left me, together with several other passengers (around 40 of us), out of the flight that we had booked and paid for, in spite of having arrived at the airport well over 2 hours prior to departure.
Additionally, Alitalia staff at Simon Bolivar Airport (Caracas) did not even try to minimise the problem by booking us on the next Alitalia flight (which was the following day). Instead, the made us go to the main Alitalia office in Caracas the following day “to see what they could do”.
Anticipating another overbooking problem, that morning I took the precaution to go to the Alitalia office earlier than the rest of the people that were in that situation, but as it turned out it was worse, as they booked me a seat with Lufthansa for the same day, and later I found out that the other passenger were allocated seats in business class with the Alitalia flight. On top of that, to my surprise, when I got to do the check in with Lufthansa (over 4 hours prior to departure) they would not accept the ticket Alitalia had issued me with because they had overbooked their flight as well and were giving priority to their passengers. Hence, I was told that I had to wait for the flight to be closed and IF there was any seat left, then they would let me on the plane. Seeing that I was facing the risk of being left in Venezuela again I went to the Alitalia counter and asked them to get me on their plane, but it was too late, as they had already closed the flight (which was overbooked as well, of course). In the end, after one hour waiting and running from the Alitalia counter to the Lufthansa one at the airport, they managed to somehow persuade one of the Alitalia passengers to give his seat up and fly with Lufthansa, so that I could get on the Alitalia plane.
I am a person that has taken several flights and definitively nothing even close to this ever happened to me before. I still cannot believe that Alitalia had not taken any precautions to, at least, give answers to the customers that were in this situation. Thus, after being put through all this distress I expected a satisfactory compensation from Alitalia.
Once in UK, I requested Alitalia for compensation due to the inconvenience caused (as they did not offer any compensation in Caracas). After a long wait (more than one and a half months), the reply from Alitalia was a letter of apology plus an offer of 96 GBP.
For those who don't know about this, if this had happened in Europe, they would have been forced to offer a much better compensation but basically they took advantage of the problem being in South America where there is no specific regulation on this.
Conclusion, the message Alitalia is sending through with this is that it is a VERY BAD option for flight outside Europe as they compensate well below the standards of the other big companies (e.g. Air France, Lufthansa, etc). So, if in doubt about flying Alitalia, avoide it if you can!!!!!!