Alitalia: The world's worst airline company? {Gadling}

Apr 10th 2009 4:29AM What a coincidence. Searching "worst airline company in the world" on google brought up Alitalia as the first 2 links; whom I flew with (or tried to) round trip from dallas to chicago and chicago to rome just 3 weeks ago. (March 13 - March 21). Our flight to Chicago was fine, but our flight from chicago to rome started the long unprecedented search for another flight. Our plane had issues just 15 minutes into the flight and was canceled after about an hour of anxiously waiting and wondering what happened. Alitalia has an agreement with AirOne airlines to use their planes and this is what airline we were on when departing from Chicago. 4 hours later we finally got to speak with the ticket desk (all 300+ passengers were waiting in this single line) and discovered our new flight wouldn't only leave 8 hours after it was supposed to from Chicago, but we would have another unexpected and unscheduled 6 hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany. That puts me and my friends (for spring break, mind you) 16 hours behind our scheduled arrival in Rome - and our hostel. Alitalia sets us up with a completely different company - Air India - on the way to Germany. Anyway, we get to Frankfurt and find out we weren't guaranteed a spot on the next available flight to Rome via Alitalia/AirOne after our 6 hour layover. We had somehow (and nobody even cared to mention this to us) that we had been put on standby in Frankfurt for the flight we had been promised we had reservations for. After much hassle dealing with the AirOne ticket desk, they eventually tell us where the Alitalia information center is and we go searching for this "infamous" ticket office. They're closed. For another 13 hours. Okay, well we somehow get on the flight we were on standby for and make it to Rome 16 hours after we were scheduled so the 6 of us had to spend 170 euro on 2 taxi's to take us to our Hostel. It was after midnight (Rome time) when we arrived so the metro and all other forms of transportation were closed. We thought we would have to cut a day in Florence or even Venice, and maybe another day if we hadn't made the stand-by flight. All in all, Alitalia has very, very poor communication skills when it comes to customer service and dealing with their partners. I strongly, STRONGLY suggest spending a couple more bucks and getting customer service and better airline quality than Alitalia. Granted, we are college students and were psyched that we got such a cheap deal on flights, but this experience definitely taught us a lesson when it comes to cheap travel. Good thing we bought insurance for the flight because our insurance agency said they have had many troubles with this company and are working out some sort of reimbursement for the taxis and hopefully for the flight. However, at this point I'm just hoping for whatever compensation I can get. They did however give us a $10 meal voucher in Chicago.