After several years I decided to fly again with Alitalia. Due to my location it makes more sense to fly either via no-frills Airlines or BA, as these until last year were the only ones which provided the best connection to mainland Italy. Since last Christmas I have had the pleasure (not) to fly with alitalia twice.
First occasion (big mistake) on 24 December, I decided to book the flight well in advance to avoid pumped up prices etc. I booked the flight via the call centre. Everything was then confirmed about 4 weeks prior of departing.
Due to my arrival location I had to catch 3 different flights (I know receipt for disaster...however nothing prepared myself for what I was going to experience). Once I have arrived in Manchester I boarded the first flight to Paris, everything was fine, the plane was "only" 40 minutes late, which it meant that I had to rush a bit once I arrived in Paris in order to get the connection to Rome (fantastic service from the French airport staff, very helpful
and prompt in helping me out, who says the French have not got customer service skills!?!). doing their job.
The second flight was right on time, and therefore once in Rome I had about 2hours before my 3rd and final flight, which was (yes was) scheduled for about 7pm. As I was saying once in Rome I found the departure lounge rather .....mmmm quiet...... well when I finally managed to find a representative from Alitalia I was told that due to the fact that it was Xmas eve the company decided to cancel the flight (no one actually thought to advise either the customers or people on the departures location).
Obviously as I booked the flight about 3 months before and confirmed that everything was ok 4 weeks before I was wondering what had happened. I was simply told that the company decided to cancel the flight. I mean xmas has been around for over 2000 years (plenty of time for the Alitalia staff and management to take a decision!)
The only Alitalia Representative simply told me that he could not do anything at all, as I did not want to spend Xmas night stuck in an airport I enquired if I could be at least be booked in an hotel.
Again I was told that it was not their problem and that I would need to sort my situation myself....(Italian customer service? ......gosh....)
(I eventually decided to book the only hotel around, the lovely Hilton hotel....and on my own expenses....:-( )
As I had a few hours spare time (the next available flight was 10 am the day after) I kind of looked at the way the Alitalia customer service staff dealt with the various issues .......well I have to say that I felt rather ashamed of being Italian. The ruddiness of the staff (at that point there were 2 more customer service agents) was unbelievable, their ruddiness was not only due to language barriers, as they equally rather impolite in Italian and also English (or what they consider English as most of them can only say about 100 words and as it happens most of them are used with the word NO....)
You would have thought that the above miss adventure of having to spend Xmas night away from home just because Alitalia realized that Xmas eve was on 24th December and decided to cancel different flights without informing any customers........put me off for life! Well silly silly me.... ooppsss I did it again! I decided to give Alitalia a second chance.......and I am still paying for it!!!!!!
Again decided to take an Alitalia flight about 10 days ago (This time I planned well my trip and made sure there would be no Xmas or bank holidays around so that I would avoid any problems....).......The outbound flights went ok (apart from a couple of small issues but these can happen with any airlines....although it seemed from the expressions form the experienced travelers that these happen quite often with Alitalia....)
On the way back quite confident that everything would go as on the way out I was looking forward to a relaxing journey back ......how wrong could I have been!!?!!! Sigh.....First flight was great, no problems or anything, staff at the airport were really friendly! I thought fantastic! I am really happy about it!
Then trouble began, once I went to get the connection I was informed that due to a sudden problem I would need to wait about 4 hours in the Airport (I kindly asked, and expected, would you be able to provide any refreshments?) the answer was simply "NO"
Anyway after 4 hours waiting I finally got onto the second plane, flight went fine and got to Milan in time for my third flight ( I still had about 1 hour to spare). Got the 3rd and final flight and finally arrived to Manchester. Once I went to the baggage collection I discovered that My bag was not with me on the plane....fair enough, at this point I just wanted to go back home......
well it appears (after 10 days) that my bag has suddenly disappeared! and Alitalia simply answers "no idea where that can be!".......
Deffo I will not follow the say " there is not 2 without 3...." this is the last time I trusted Alitalia as a company!
The food on the planes is not as good as what used to be (but again most airlines either offer no food, or the food is of poor quality),
Beverages are of good quality, the wine is actually quite nice.
From Manchester it is possible (well kind off!) to reach most of the italian airports (not directly but via Milan Malpensa Airport, appx 50k from Milan) therefore quite often you might have to wait for several hours in the Airport (Malmpensa is in the middle of nowhere....)
Prices are the same as most competitors, maybe slightly cheaper on some of the routes, but again from my personal experience you might end up paying much more!
It might have been me very unfortunate however I really doubt I will take the risk again!
To summarize the situation a very disappointing service from Alitalia customer service staff, rude, not caring about their customers (who are the people who pay for their wage) and rather miss informing their customer of changes etc!
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May 18th, 2005
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