About 12 years ago I had a bad experience with Alitalia. We had flown from Santiago, Chile to Madrid on another airline and connected to Alitalia for the remainder of the trip to Sicily. First, we were delayed out of Madrid for 3 hours because of air congestion over Rome. Several hours later we arrived in Rome and went to check in for our flight to Palermo only to be told that the flight had been cancelled. So, apparently had every other flight to Palermo that afternoon. We waited around Rome for several hours asking every now and then about a flight with no result. Someone appeared magically and said "psst, you want flight to Palermo, come with me". We followed him downstairs and to an out of the way counter where we were handed two tickets to Palermo on the next flight. Needless to say, we took them. Arriving in Palermo, we found that the baggage conveyer was broken. After about an hour and a half of baggage guys running around looking confused, someone came out and pushed a big red button on the conveyer and voila, the luggage came pouring out. By this time we were about 9 hours delayed in an already 31 hour trip from South America to Sicily....and we still had to drive to the other side of the island. When we go to our hotel in the wee hours of the morning, the guy on the desk started to give me a bad time about checking in so late. I just told him that he had no idea what I had been through but I would advise him to just back off and give us a room!

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