I posted this to my Flickr account, but thought I’d share it here also.

Alitalia, quite possibly the most incompetent airline I’ve ever had the misfortune of flying with. They lost our luggage on our flight out to Rome. Actually, they didn’t lose it more they left it in Amsterdam with 90% of total luggage from all passengers on the flight. How is that even possible? I mean did no one on the crew or ground staff not think it strange that a plane with around 140 passengers on it was going to Rome without pretty much any luggage at all? Apparently not.

So we wait two days waiting to hear news of our belongings. We managed to get through those 48 hours in Rome by wearing the same clothes. It’s not as bad as it sounds, I do it regularly. But in 35° Celsius heat and an air humidity level greater than a hippos rear end it’s asking a lot. So we’re wondering where our luggage is. I call up and find out that they have it and is now on it’s way to us, being delivered before 9pm guaranteed. Guess what. After waiting 10 hours the day later it’s a no show on the luggage. I call again asking what happened. "Oh, your luggage is here. You have to come and collect it.". What happened to the delivery? Apparently I’d told them I’d go to the airport 40 km away to collect it myself. Why would I do that?

I wasn’t going a day longer without the luggage so we went and got it that night, before the 11pm closing time in the luggage reclaim. Even if I missed the 11pm deadline I was still coming back with my luggage. Rage. What really got me through all this though was that we received not one single apology from any member of staff that dealt with us. Not even a smile. A bunch of miserable, depressed looking robots dressed in green and white uniforms communicating in as condescending a way as possible.

KLM were great though, both flying out to Rome and back to Glasgow.

I wasn’t going to let Alitalia ruin our holiday though.