Just got back two weeks ago. Beware - my seats were supposed to be assigned, but when I got to check in at Alitalia, they weren't. They said my husband and I couldn't sit together. The weird thing was, there were lots of empty seats on the plane and the flight attendants told everyone to move wherever they wanted just after boarding, so we did sit together. They also lost my vegetarian meal request. Luckily, I had no problem with carrying a little food on.

No tv screens on the 767 from JFK to Rome! A 777 on the way back - it had tv screens, but they were broken. Buzzed a flight attendant 3 times to try to get some water. Finally, flagged down one who was just walking by.

Lost my luggage on the way home, but got it back the next day.

Took off an hour late both times for seemingly no reason. All other flights were running on time.

To sum up: we were not impressed with Alitalia! But they did get us to Rome, and that was worth it.

From Miami to ROme the food in business was the best I had in a plane for a long time. Go figure...

Lilli, I am expecting your kind of trip on this airline. I want to cry and laugh at the same time, although I may just cry all the way over there. Is it really possible to sleep even with a "sleeping aid"?

L4, I don't recall seeing, but are you sure that you can't do carry-on for your trip? You'll save yourself a lot of grief if you can.

Don't worry about the seat assignments. If you have more heart than me, then just keep calling Alitalia until you get someone who will assign you a seat. The most important thing is that you get on the plane. Undoubtedly they will shuffle all of the seat arrangements and then you and 20 other people will walk around asking each other if you can swap seats. Again, so long as you're on the plane, you're good...

I'm just like you - plan, plan plan. But my trip to Italy helped me to let go of some of that as there's only so much you can do after a while.

Again, check to see if you can take solid foods on board, pack some Ambien and an IPod if you have one. Yes sleeping aids can work! Just don't count on the TV. Whatever did we do before we had TV's on the seats anyway? You entertain yourself-books, magazines, puzzles, chitchat with the person next to you, and try to sleep.

And daydream, daydream, daydream

HERE IS HOW ALITALIA STOLE 240,000 OF MY MILES:

In August 2008: I transferred 240,000 miles from my AMEX to our Alitalia Millemiglia account in order to book 2 business class tickets to Europe from Los Angeles.

Between Aug 2008 and August 2010: My wife and I have been unsuccessful to find "available" seats on Alitalia flights for business class tickets to fly to Europe (from Los Angeles). We have been willing to spend more miles, but still their system would not make seats available to us. During this same period, we successfully booked at least 13 round-trip business class tickets with Delta Airlines, which did have availability when Alitalia did not. Before booking each flight with Delta, we attempted to book with Alitalia, but their system would never have availability (each time that Delta did). How is it reasonable that for at least 13 separate business class tickets, their partner Delta had availability, when Alitalia Airline did not?

On August 28, 2010: Without notice, Alitalia removed our miles from our account. And their customer service department says its their policy that we forfeited our miles because we hadn't used them.

FOR 2 YEARS, WE TRIED RELENTLESSLY TO FIND AVAILABLE SEATS ON ALITALIA FLIGHTS. ALITALIA WOULD NEVER MAKE ANY SEATS AVAILABLE TO US. WE FLEW TO EUROPE AT LEAST 13 TIMES WITH DELTA, ALSO USING MILES. WE TRIED FEVERISHLY TO MAKE USE OF OUR MILES WITH ALITALIA.

So how did Alitalia steal 240,000 of my miles? They basically made NO SEATS AVAILABLE to me for 2 years, after which time they deleted my miles from my account (WITHOUT NOTICE).

http://alitaliastolemymiles.blogspot.com/