FYI, as of 5/8 the national air traffic controller strike for Italy scheduled for May 14 has been shortened from 24 hours to run from 8am to 6pm only. It will also not affect flights to or from Sicily (at least if my Italian is not too far off). Some of the regional strikes are still listed for the 24 hour period or for other periods, however, so your milage may vary.

Good news. Helps some

Anybody know good websites to check for updated strike info? (trains as well as planes)?

Thanks!

http://www.infrastrutturetrasporti.i...php?p=scioperi

http://www.seekitaly.com/news/from_roma.html#strikes


Hope this helps ...

Steve

The advantate of the seekitaly site is that it is in english, but, for example, they had not updated the time of the air traffic controller's strike as of this afternoon. The "official" site is http://www.commissionegaranziasciopero.it/

The biggest problem is learning to use it and reading italian. For help, go to this site first: http://www.whatsoninrome.com/more-strikes.php It contains instructions and examples to make it doable. Remember that Ferrovia is the railroad and Aero is an airplane. One further complication is that you can have a national railroad strike, but if the union involved is a minor one only, it may not screw up travel at all. The whatsoninrome site gives you some tips here too. Good luck!

Our awful experience with the Italy airlines strike on May 14th may be of some use. Becuz of the real threat of strike (10:00-16:00, our flight was at 10:15), we took the train from Florence to Paris instead of waiting in Florence to fly (not fly?). DON'T EVER DO THIS!
We were greeted with the news in Paris that the strike was called off and we had to rebook our second leg to Boston because we missed the first part of the trip from Florence. They said it would cost 12,000 euro (~$1700) each to get home!
Two questions ...
Does anyone know exactly when that strike was called off? And what recourse do we have to protest this ruling by the people at Air France?
We tried reaching AF by phone 10 times before we decided to take the train on Sunday the 13th, and even went to their office, but to no avail. They are closed all over Italy on the weekends. Beware! And there was nothing on the internet about the strike.
I ended up using 50,000 freq flyer miles (yes, for round trip: "that's the only way&quotand my sister found a cheaper American airline flight for the next day. But still, we spent a fortune and totally missed our ground connections in Boston.