Leigh

Message: I would like some recent information about traveling on Alitalia Airlines from Boston to Milan and then on to Rome. Yes, I've done my research on this site. So far, I have had immense difficulty reaching them to get seat assignments. One day we called for over 3 hours! We finally called Alitalia in Rome to get the seats. I have read that the food is bad, the crew indifferent, and (thankfully) there's not smoking. What else can we expect? Somewhere I read that sometimes the crew is from NW or Continental - is this true?

Gina

I haven't flown Boston-Milan, but did just fly Newark-Rome and Milan-Newark (plus Rome-Tunis and Tunis-Milan) on Alitalia. The transatlantic flights were both Continental-operated, and as smooth as any other transatlantic flight I've taken. The only hitch was running into a massive snowstorm in Newark at the end; not an airline-related problem (although *all* the airlines and everyone at the airport seemed to be managing the storm issues badly--this was in early Feb.).

Anyway, even the short-hop Alitalia flights I took were no-smoking and fine as far as service. Food no worse than any I've had on other flights and better than many. Even got bumped up to business class Tunis-Milan for no reason I could see. But I understand many other people have had bad Alitalia experiences, so I don't know if mine was an aberration or not.

As far as the seating requests, that was a pain for me too. I had a travel agent book my flights (it was a discount deal), and there was some confusion in my records, so no one could figure out if it was Continental or Alitalia who should assign my transatlantic seats. It became a real pain, and I almost wound up with a middle seat on the Newark-Rome flight (yeeeks!); fortunately, I was alert at the airport and got right back into line to request a new assignment.