travellerwannabe

Just wanted to share our experience with Alitalia so far for our upcoming honeymoon in July.

Our original honeymoon plan was to go to Greece. I suggested to my DF that we take Alitalia and do a small stopover in Milan since we haven't been there and I LOVE Italy. I have heard many many negative things about Alitalia but I wanted the Milan stop so badly that I decided that I'm willing to put up with it all! It also helped that it was one of the cheaper flights. Afterall, if one has negative expectations it's hard to be disappointed right?

So after many changes to our Itinerary, our trip evolved and we're now spending 9 days in Italy woo hoo!

When i was looking at flights, i found what i thought was the perfect flight, direct flight toronto-Milan and then Milan - Athens and it was cheaper than getting a ticket that goes to Milan only (NOT direct) and doesn't continue to Athens. (this should've been a bit of a red flag). My DF also mentioned that he thought that Flights to Athens stopped in Rome (should've also been a red flag )

We bought our tickets through expedia in the beginning of Dec.

At the end of Dec, we get a message from expedia asking us to call them as there have been changes to our flight. We do, they mention some time changes, 15 minutes here 15 minutes there, no biggie.

One week later we get another notice. This time everything has been revamped and the direct flight to Milan doesn't exist anymore and any flights to athens now have a connection in Rome not Milan. However, since we had already bought our tickets they're flying us to Milan anyway. So now our flight Itinerary looks like this

Original flight:
Toronto-Milan
Milan-Athens
Athens-Milan
Milan - Toronto

Flight after change
Toronto-rome-Milan
Milan - Athens
Athens-rome
Rome Toronto


Another week goes by and we get another call. There are no direct flights from Milan to Athens, we now have to connect to Rome on that leg too. This time we go back and forth few times because since one of our flight was changing to a much earlier time in the day, i wanted them to give us an extra day there. Expedia did their homework and negotiated with Alitalia who agreed to this.
and now our Itinerary changed again to the following

Toronto-rome-Milan
Milan- rome-athens
Athens-Rome
Rome Toronto

This is still our Itinerary, and all of our hotels are booked in the various destinations. We have received 2 more notifications since , the first was a small time adjustment and the second was a change in the time of the connection from rome-Milan as new times of the flights are too close together for us to make our connection, so the stopover went from being 50 minutes, so 6 hours. We decided that this is actually positive and gives us time to go into Rome and have pizza at our favourite place in Campo dei Fiori.

We started out with low expectations and still have a smile on our face but only time and Alitalia will tell how it will go from here

Sorry about the essay

zoecat

At least they are notifying you of the changes! I've experienced airlines forgetting this slightly important communication.

travellerwannabe

I give Expedia credit for that. Not sure how good Alitalia would be at it.

jordangreen

We had a similar experience, being booked in/out of Milan to Malta on Alitlaia. We were not informed of canceled schedule. Now we go via Rome. Our fingers are crossed for September '08 travel. Good luck; hope we don't find each other sleeping in the airport lounge!!

KellyGreta

Travellerwannabe, I share your aggravation with Alitalia! Our original direct flight Boston to Milan is now going thru Rome, with a 5.5 hour layover! After considering options, such as terminating in Rome and getting train to Venice, our travel agent found flights to the older Milan airport, Linate. So we will continue with our original plans of beginning our trip at Lake Garda and the Dolomites.

wavejourney

Whenever you book a flight that far in advance, it will almost certainly change a number of times before you fly. With Delta we had our flights to South Africa changed about 6 times in the 3 months leading up to departure. It happens and should be expected from all the airlines - the good part is when they tell you about the changes. Just make sure that your connections are all doable - Delta had us leaving on a flight within 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival... impossible!

ira

Hi T,

This sort of thing is not limited to Alitalia.

It's part of modern life.

travelgourmet

"This sort of thing is not limited to Alitalia.

It's part of modern life."

Yeah, but it is worse with Alitalia than with most other carriers.

"I give Expedia credit for that. Not sure how good Alitalia would be at it."

Which is right, I recently had a trip on Alitalia, where I had booked my ticket on Expedia and the wife had booked directly with Alitalia (long story, related to elite status qualification). At any rate, there was a schedule change, and I received a response from Expedia, while the wife did not get anything from Alitalia. Indeed, I would only book Alitalia through a travel agent, which is the exact opposite path I take with most other airlines.

Fra_Diavolo

I always check the "nonstop only" box. Saves me a heap of trouble.

Trish

I had flights on Alitalia for this coming August ATL-BOS-MXP-TUN and the same on the return except we had a direct flight from MXP to ATL they were booked on our Delta frequent flyer miles. When I went to check our intinerary for our flight two weeks ago to Guadeloupe I noticed some changes to our summer flight. Our flight from Milan to Tunis was cancelled and our return flight from Tunis to Milan was now getting in at noon when our flight from Milan to ATL left at 11:00. We recieved no notice from Delta or Alitalia and wonder if they ever planned on it. I'm pretty gun shy when it comes to Alitalia ever since getting bumped off on b/c ticket while I had a boarding pass in hand. I decided to scrap Tunisia changed our flights to ATL-FCO direct and we'll either head south to Sicily or over to Croatia and Montenegro but either way no Alitalia!