I'm flying from the west coast to Italy this spring, and can chose between Lufthansa through Frankfurt or KLM ("operated by NW) through Amsterdam.

Any input on which would be a better experience, either by airline or connecting airport?

I've never flown Lufthansa, love KLM within Europr and have had bad experiences with NW, but that was several years ago.

Thanks for any input!

Skytrax gives KLM three stars and Lufthansa four stars:

http://www.airlinequality.com/Airlines/AirlineD-M.htm#l

Lufthansa is very reliable and has lots of connections across the Atlantic as well as in Europe. This is an advantage if something unusual happens (you miss a flight, a flight is late for some reason, you miss a connection). I always found that Lufthansa offered other options in such cases.

My daughter did LAX to MXP on LH via FRA a couple of years ago.

She was asleep when the breakfast serving started but woke up while trays were still being passed out. The FA refused to serve her. I can't understand that one.

She arrived in MXP but LH lost her luggage. It arrived the next day.

I have always liked KLM but "operated by NW" is not the same, as you know. I would shop around for a real KLM flight.

Schiphol is probably the nicer airport to transit through.

January - look at the responses to your post in the Airline forum, especially about comparing "domestic" flights with international service, and the difference in planes.

KL doesn't get a lot of good comments these days on their international service, but we haven't flown them in several years so I can't personally comment.

We've flown LH 8 times in the past 3 years and have no complaints. We found their service, food, FAs to be quite good. Very efficient, as one would expect from Germans. On one flight from FIR, we were very late into MUC and had 20 min to make connection. LH held up our flight and not only did we make it, but all bags did as well.

I'd give an edge to AMS over FRA as far as airports. FRA is older and more spread out, but it is very easy to navigate IMO and I certainly don't consider it a bad airport - nothing like LHR or CDG.

We flew LH (operated by Aircanada though), to Venice, connecting in FRA. We had seat at the back (middle two seats in a 4 person row). After everyone was done eating we sat there with our empty trays for a long time, 1/2 to an hour can't remember exactly. As I had one person on my right and two people to my left i asked the FA if she would take my tray as I REALLY needed to use the restroom and there was no place to put it. She simply refused saying that they weren't taking them yet. After waiting for another while my bf ended up balancing 3 trays while everyone moved out of their seats for me to go. The FA just stood there watching.

The layover with LH is much shorter and you arrive at decent time not later in evening. Service was great in April of last year to VCE and flying again with them in September to VCE.
Just be sure your on LH and no their partner United which uses the 747-400 squeeze box plane and has zip service.
LH airbus on the other hand has great service free wine etc. United its coffee, soda, water and really bad food.

travellerwannabe - if I read your post correctly, you were on codeshare with LH/AC, but the plane and crew was AC. So your comments were on your AC flight to FRA and not the connection to VCE, correct?

it said "lH operated by air canada" so I guess so. YEs to FRA , not the connection to Venice.

Sorry, that was Air canada operated by LH

so it was definitely an LH plane but we bought the tix through AC

Thanks - just wanted to make sure I understood. Your experience didn't sound pleasant.

Flew NW this past Sunday out of Schiphol. Had to wait on the runway for an hour plus due to a "rudder" problem. The seatback screen system had to be rebooted. When we arrived in BOS the jetway would not move so we had to be towed to another gate.

The person I sat next to said when she left BOS they had to sit for over three hours due to a mechanical problem. They missed their connection and had to wait 5 hours in Schiphol.

I have had good experiences with Lufthansa.

Thank you all; this is very helpful. Gomiki, that's a rough experience! And yours too, travellerwanabe.

I'm not sure which way to go yet, but as I understand from the Airline forum, NW is better than I'd expected, Lufthansa's good too -- both have occasional problems.

I really appreciate the feedback; I'll be back to report when I figure this out.