I flew Alitalia about four years ago from Toronto to Tel Aviv via Rome. The flight to Rome was pretty uneventful the Kosher meals on the flight however were atrocious. All I know was the meal was meat and it was brown past that it was unidentifiable. The pasta side with it defied the laws of science as half of it was still ice and the other half was boiling. The flight attendents were also extremely rude, I pressed the call button they came to my seat turned it off and just walked away without even speaking to me. The flight from Rome to Tel Aviv is boarded via bus from the gate to the plane. Knowing this I waited until the last bus came, however problem was is that they forgot to send the bus and I had to wait on the tarmac in the freezing cold for 30 minutes before they realized that they left 50 people just standing there. The plane that they used was such a shade of green on the inside that even with your eyes closed you could still see it. It looked like Kermit the Frog threw up in it.
My return flight was an even greater nightmare. There is only one flight between FCO and TLV (unless things have changed) and there was a storm in Israel that ended about 3 hours before my scheduled departure. I was flying on XMas eve which is an extremely busy day at FCO and the airline decided that due to weather they were going to cancel the flight from FCO to TLV effectively canceling the flight from TLV to FCO because there was no plane. Instead of telling us what was going on the airline had us wait at the check in counter for 3 hours before they decided to rebook us on an El Al flight to FCO instead. Finally when I went to checkin they told me that because the typical airline was not handling the flight to FCO and because I had 6 hours connection between flights that they could only ticket my luggage to FCO and not to my final destination in Toronto even that they were checking others to other final destinations. This meant that I had to clear customs in Rome, claim my luggage, check in again for my flight to Toronto, clear exit control and then finally go to my gate. No problem I thought, I had 6 hours. Well after 2hrs in customs 1hr for luggage 1hr for checkin and another 2hrs for exit control, I managed to make it to my gate as they were boarding my plane. I complained to the airline but was told that they cannot be held responsible or weather related events.
I told this to a friend of mine and he told me that I was one of lucky ones because normally Alitalia will lose your luggage on average for about a week.
So sometimes when a deal with an airline seems to good to be true it usually is. They are a horrible airline with horrible customer service and that green oh how it was haunting.
