Alitalia

✅ Verified Review | Flew Alitalia from Madrid to Tokyo via Rome. In the last couple of years I've done a lot of long haul flying but this was undoubtedly the worst experience of all. The seats were incredibly uncomfortable with very little leg room. I'm not tall but I finished the flight with back pain. The food was practically inedible. I showed my overheated pasta dish to the air hostess: the pasta was stuck to the lid and the sauce was completely dried up. She kindly tried to remedy the situation by bringing another dish which was swimming in oil. The entertainment system was antediluvian. The same air hostess had to do a reset to try to get it to work which it did intermittently. The air hostess was the best thing about the flight. She did her best and tried to be helpful unlike her male colleagues who seemed to wish they were someone else. I only got this flight because a friend had booked it. In fact, she ended flying up with another airline.

✅ Verified Review | The reason I chose Alitalia on this journey from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino against BA is the extra legroom they offer in business class and the assumption of better meals of the Italians. The BA legroom is exactly the same as economy class seats', the only difference is the unoccupied and "trayed" middle seat shame. The staff were friendly and service was smooth, but the drinks list was short. Prosecco ran out after one small bottle (I mean one bottle for all passengers in business class), gin tonic was simply unavailable. They only had grappa and limoncello as a shot on board. But to be frank, the meal was delicious. The "Priority" tagged luggage arrived much sooner in Rome than the economy luggage indeed. Not sure I would use Alitalia again if there was another option.

✅ Verified Review | Had six flights with Alitalia in May: Milano to Rome and Milano to Tehran via FCO one week later. My feeling is that somehow the service is better, in terms of attitude and quality, on the 50 min hop than the 4hr 30min medium haul leg. Crew on the domestic leg were welcoming and smart, I cannot say the same about the Italy to Iran part since some of them were quite grumpy and generally speaking they did not seem to enjoy their job. During the first trip, "dinner" was a joke: a cold snack of questionable quality and that's it. On the way back, breakfast was served right after takeoff (so around 4am). No entertainment system of any kind, not even a map and IKA-FCO no communication at all from the cockpit, not even welcome onboard. Strange boarding procedure eer in FCO: after a long walk to a remote terminal we were bussed back to the Schengen terminal and dropped in front of the plane, then we had to walk upstairs in the finger to board from there, never happened before and I do travel a lot. The same happened on the way back from Iran. Price of the ticket was very similar to Emirates and twice as much my other option (Turkish Airlines): in the end I chose AZ because of the good connecting time from/to LIN and total trip duration and, being Italian, I will give them more chances in the future since they are renewing their fleet and improving their network but after this experience I must say I am not impressed at all.

✅ Verified Review | Flew Alitalia from NYC, JFK to Rome, Fiumicino. Boarding was smoother than anticipated. Crew and flight attendants were kind and welcoming enough. The seats were mildly uncomfortable but the pillow provided made it a bit easier to bear. The selection of movies was very good, with many recent and popular releases. Food was average - a choice of pasta or meat, as was our snack before landing. Offered wine as a drink which I liked. Upon landing, it did take quite some time to get off the plane, shuttle to our correct terminal, and pick up our bags. Overall, for the generally lower price of the ticket, I am pleased with the flight and would use it again.

✅ Verified Review | During the past week, 2 out of 4 Alitalia flights (London to Rome, and Bucharest to Rome) were delayed by more than 1 hour. Because of this, we missed one connection flight, and we had to stay overnight in Rome. 1 out of 2 pieces of luggage was lost, despite asking in the FCO airport Alitalia representative about it, and being assured that it is loaded. Tried calling London Heathrow office, no answer, website tracking is useless.

✅ Verified Review | Rome to Budapest return with Alitalia. Flight very comfortable, despite my 185cm in height I had a lot of legroom. We were served a drink and a sandwich, with a choice between meat and vegetarian. Clean plane and new thanks to the restyling of the company.

✅ Verified Review | Bologna to Rome. I am forced to use Alitalia on domestic flights. I wanted to add two suitcases online before flying - the website didn't work! The android app didn't work. I phoned their service number and after 10 minutes was asked to call another number. The service number charged me 10 euro for nothing. The alternative number answered in the rudest way to call the service number instead. I called back as I now wanted this to work - and having said how bad everything was for me a patient person took care of me and took my credit card details to pay for the two suitcases - the first I was told cost €30 and the second €55 - I said I called because I wanted the internet discount of €20/€44. She had to check and came after a long time back. I now did this to check their incredibly bad performance knowing very well it would be cheaper to pay the full price instead of the expensive telephone. She came back and said they would give me the lower tarif and she took my card details and she said it was OK. I checked afterwards if it was registred on my booking, but the website then told me my booking wasn't found! I gave up to phone back and wasn't sure what to expect at the airport the next day. They did find my booking, but not any mentioning of included luggage. I had to go and pay the full tarif having spent a lot of time and money (almost €30) on phone calls in addition. I have flown domestic in Italy with Vueling twice since then.

Los Angeles to Rome with Alitalia. I must say I was quite disappointed. First my flight was booked with Delta and given to Alitalia. The seats are small and the entertainment system complicated to use. The food was just okay and no ice on the flight. I had a window seat since I don't get up much and to my surprise this over sized box is attached to seat whch does not allow you to have leg room - this was very uncomfortable. Thank goodness the seat next to me was vacant. I am dreading my return flight home, because I have a window seat again and don't know if I will get so lucky again. The staff were so so, not always as pleasant as they could have been.

✅ Verified Review | Brussels to Brindisi via Rome with Alitalia. Clearly the investment from Etihad is working as they have upgraded their product. The cabin received a nice new look. Also a sandwhich is now provided on international flights for free next to soft drinks and wine. Salt or sweet snacks with soft drinks are available for free on domestic flights. Clean modern aircraft both ways. Most of the flights departed with a delay but landed on time except for the Brussels to Rome flight, resulting in not having our check-in luggage at Brindisi. Alitalia is clearly back on track.

✅ Verified Review | I chose to fly with Alitalia to Tokyo as they were the cheapest carrier at the time, and being a student it has to be the cheapest! Due to delay issues, we did not fly out with Alitalia, but flew them on the return from Tokyo to London via Rome. The flight from Tokyo was alright, nothing more nothing less. I did not expect much paying a cheap fare and I would not say it was drastically worse than other economy class on average. Legroom was fairly poor, the entertainment system was a bit outdated and the food was okay except they ran out of choice by the time they reached me. However what do you expect when you pay just over £400 return. So 8/10 for the price paid. Ground service on the way out was awful. We checked in and reached the gate for our outbound flight to Rome. After a delay of an hour we are told that the flight was cancelled. By this stage I knew getting to Tokyo would be awkward as we would miss our connection. Normally an airline will re-route you the quickest route to your destination and often with a partner airline. This did not happen whatsoever. There was a 2 hour wait to get re-routed and once at the front we were told we would be re-routed the following day - no compensation, no food voucher and a hotel night was all that was offered. The staff were rude and did not seem to know what they were doing. I believed they were stressed and waited for everybody to be re-routed then came back to challenge them for a better re-route. After an hour of telling the staff about what Skyteam was and their partnership with other airlines they finally started to look for an earlier flight. However again the staff were clueless and did not know about other routes, it was I looking up flight numbers and partner airlines myself and showing them on my phone that finally got us re-routed on Korean Air via Seoul. Leaving us with an 8 hour delay rather than 24 hours. So Alitalia are worth the price if you know what you are doing when you travel. If you're an anxious traveller or new to flying I would not recommend them purely on the basis that if something goes wrong it would not be a pleasurable experience. Just make sure that if you are ever delayed ensure that you get food vouchers and know of any possible re-routes and ask for one kindly once everybody else has already been re-routed, otherwise their stress = shouting at you and not wanting to help.