We booked thru Continental for an Alitalia flight from JFK to Rome in April, 2007. Two of the tickets are using mileage, one is a paid ticket on the same flight. I am concerned about what kind of protection we will have if Alitalia does go bankrupt. When I called Continental, all they could tell me is that this is just a rumor and that Continental will protect its ticketholders. Has anyone had actual experience with a situation such as this?

HAR32JU34 - You're protected by CO. If AZ closes it door, then CO has to rebook you on some other airlines, including itself.

"HAR32JU34 - You're protected by CO. If AZ closes it door, then CO has to rebook you on some other airlines, including itself."

This would probably not apply to the free mileage ticket. If Alitalia stopped operating, Continental is not about to open up seats for free on their airline, and definitely would not be able to do so on another airline

mulifat - That's untrue. Whenever a schedule change on an award flight, CO (or any airline) will let people switch to any flights with open general seats. Of course, if one's flying in peak periods, they may not have many choices. But they will accomodate you.

Please keep us posted on the status of Alitalia. We're booked from Rome to Newark in Biz Class using Delta f.f. miles in July. Delta said they'd get us home should there be a problem but said it would likely take a few extra days to get us out of Rome!!! I asked if Delta would pay our hotel for these extra days and the rep said NO. This doesn't seem right?

Airlines in general don't pay for your hotel stay when schedule change (or shut its doors). They pay when they have a last-minute cancellation, usually due to mechanical.

Wow, this is really bad news for us. We just booked tickets through Orbiz for our trip next May and we are scheduled on them for London to Rome then part way home from Rome to JFK. Looks like I better keep an eye on things and check the insurance I bought! I have no idea if this is covered. Too bad I didn't see this earlier....

After the precedents of Swissair and Sabena, anything is possible -- but also, due to those precedents, countries like Italy will do everything imaginable to keep it from happening. And that's what Air France-KLM is waiting for.

Hi, the Italian news I read today said that Thai Air is very interested in merging with Alitalia even though they belong to different FF programs.

As I understand the EU laws will not allow the Italian government to bail Alitalia out of their financial problems again.

Another "argument" is that evidently the Italian government wants Rome to be the main hub for Alitalia versus Malpensa. The Northern Italians are having a fit and a half about that.

So many arguments and so little time.

Dukey, when I called to try to insure my trip yesterday, I was told I couldn't get coverage for financial default because Alitalia went on their "in bankruptcy" list on Oct. 12, 2006. So are they are aren't they?!

At any rate, after stewing about this all night, I got an e-mail this AM from the online-ticketing agency I'd used saying my e-tickets were still "pending", and I wasn't ticketed yet. Called the credit card company and there were no pending charges for the tickets yet. So I wrote an e-mail to the ticket agency saying I wanted to cancel the booking, and followed up with a phone call. I stayed on the phone until I saw an e-mail confirmation saying it was canceled and there were no charges.

I guess I'm feeling relieved, but I'm also bummed out because I'd gotten a great fare and I really liked the itinerary. It's a shame that we can't just be worried about fare and itineraries, that we also have to check on the solvency of every carrier we deal with. We should be able to trust that we will get what we pay for, and it's sad that we no longer can.
So now I'm back to square one.

Some of those insurance policies just have a list of carriers they won't cover, and they don't have to literally be in bankruptcy -- just financially unstable and possibly could be. So if someone called it an "in bankruptcy" list, that may not be literal but just that they know it is very likely they will be soon. They've had problems for a long time, so insurers don't really want to insure things that have a high probability of problems.

"mulifat - That's untrue. Whenever a schedule change on an award flight, CO (or any airline) will let people switch to any flights with open general seats. Of course, if one's flying in peak periods, they may not have many choices. But they will accomodate you."

Schedule change perhaps. But we are talking about a scenario of Alitalia stopping operations.(a strong possibility) Try this on on......Alitalia stops operating 2 weeks before the OP is scheduled to travel. Continental has 2 seats left in the cabin, that they can either sell at full tariff, or give them away for free to mileage members. What choice do you think they are going to make?

Or, they are sold out entirely when Alitalia goes out. Do you suppose they are going to pay another carrier for the OP's seats?

mulifat - I already said that they'll reaccommodate if they haven open seats on their flight. They'll also get the passenger on another partner.

There's no question that it'll be a highly messy situation and it's likely the affected passenger may not fly for days. But your post sound like an airline will just abandon the passenger, which is not that case.

Darn.. we are flying American Airlines from Phx through Chicago and transfering at Heathrow to Alitalia in March 07.. What other airline do you recommend from Heathrow to Rome.. I am seriously thinking I might go ahead and buy other tickets.. we got a very good price through Orbitz.. but it might be worth our while to fly another airline from London to Rome on our leg in.. Recommendations?

We are leaving Fri evening for Rome from Boston.

At what point should I reconfirm my flight with Alitalia?

I have visions of when we flew to Venice last year via Air France - we called to confirm 24 hrs prior, then arrived at the airport 3 hours early - just in case - and were told by Air France our flight had been cancelled.

When I asked why they didn't notify us, they told us it was because it was a code-share with Delta, and we had booked through Delta, so we don't get notified.

Luckily, we were able to get re-routed on the last Continental (yuk!) flight out with about 15 min. to spare to get to the gate. Not a great start to our trip. Had we arrived at the "normal" check-in time, we would have been out of luck.

Bankruptcy status does not necessarily mean that the airline will not fly. Delta, United, & U.S. Air have all been in bankruptcy and have continued to fly.

"At what point should I reconfirm my flight with Alitalia?"

I would reconfirm every day prior to departure, for one simple reason....seating assignments. Alitalia routinely cancels seating assignments, usually closer to departure. I know many, many people, who had seating assignments, sometimes up to 10 months in advance, who got to the airport and had no seats assigned, and had to scramble at the airport for seats, usually getting undesirable ones, often times separated from their families

Wanderer: Don't think that won't happen with Alitalia. We booked through Alitalia and you can read my post 15 places above you last post. They don't notify you of anything even if you book through them and re-confirm all week before you depart.

Yikes! All the joy I have felt over the last week or so since I've booked my trip to Italy in May '07 is down the tubes. Who wants this hanging over my head for the next 7 months? Now I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the fact that when I booked the flight through American Express the agent could not get me seat assignments - even when she called Alitalia direct. Sighhhhh.