Alitalia only screws up big. When their flights run, they have comfortable seats, friendly staff, and good plane food. When they run, they are really quite a pleasant airline. When they run.
Today I am sitting in Milan because my flight was canceled, just like the last time I tried to fly back to Lausanne on Alitalia. The next flight out is five hours later, so I am missing two meetings today and delaying getting back to work. You would think I would learn.
The response of the Alitalia staff makes it only worse. There was no announcement on the plane, so we all just had to figure it out on our own. I then waited in a total of three different lines, two of which took an hour, for a total about 2.5 hours of line-waiting. The agent at one of the lines told me to come back later, because for some reason they cannot check bags more than two hours before the new flight? More than two hours, you ask? Bags??, you ask? Yes, along the way unchecked all of our bags, never mind that at least in my case they had already rebooked me for another flight later in the day, thus requiring an extra trip through security so they could inspect the bags again.
Losing a day of work is a drag. Losing a day of work and then spending it all in lines is even worse. I am glad I had a good book with me, and I hope I can avoid Alitalia in the future!