Alitalia have cancelled my flights!

wxuk

laurae wrote: »

Theyre now telling me today that I have to wait until Wednesday. This is getting absolutely ridiculous, every time i ring im told conflicting information. Legally, within how many days do they have to sort this??

Its also apparently a policy that nobody can request to speak to a manager (!!)

have you selected your own routes and requested that? wait till Wednesday for a confirmed route, or wait till Wednesday to discuss it again?

mad_rich

BristolStu wrote: »

This is the response i have just had on the Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/alitalia/posts/10151426174576450?comment_id=25759986&notif_t=feed_comment What do they mean by correct booking class?

Basically, the inventory management system (the system that decides how many seats to sell and at what price on any given flight) doesn't just split up between First/ Business/ Economy.

It splits each of those up into several sub-classes. So you might have Economy split into, say, eight classes. The most expensive, flexible fares can be booked into any class, but the cheaper fares are only available on flights with availability in the more restricted lower classes.

On a flight which is looking quite empty, they will try to stimulate demand by opening up all the classes (i.e. allowing anyone at any fare on). When the flights are busier, they start restricting which passengers (at which fares) they want. On the busiest flights, they might only allow full-fare tickets.

It's all about getting the cabin as full as possible while maximising revenue.

Now, all this is very good until it comes to getting rebooked (through no fault of your own). They are saying you have a cheap economy ticket, therefore they will only rebook you onto flights which have availability in the cheap classes. This is particularly important for them if they are rebooking you onto a rival airline, where they will have to pay for your ticket.

But this is where you have to play hardball. They cancelled the Rome-Beijing flight, presumably for commercial reasons. They can afford to pay a few quid to rebook you on another airline. They just don't want to.

BristolStu

Hopefully this is sorted before the 15th Feb, as that is the date when I'm visiting the Chinese Visa office in London.

BristolStu

mad_rich wrote: »

Basically, the inventory management system (the system that decides how many seats to sell and at what price on any given flight) doesn't just split up between First/ Business/ Economy.

It splits each of those up into several sub-classes. So you might have Economy split into, say, eight classes. The most expensive, flexible fares can be booked into any class, but the cheaper fares are only available on flights with availability in the more restricted lower classes.

On a flight which is looking quite empty, they will try to stimulate demand by opening up all the classes (i.e. allowing anyone at any fare on). When the flights are busier, they start restricting which passengers (at which fares) they want. On the busiest flights, they might only allow full-fare tickets.

It's all about getting the cabin as full as possible while maximising revenue.

Now, all this is very good until it comes to getting rebooked (through no fault of your own). They are saying you have a cheap economy ticket, therefore they will only rebook you onto flights which have availability in the cheap classes. This is particularly important for them if they are rebooking you onto a rival airline, where they will have to pay for your ticket.

But this is where you have to play hardball. They cancelled the Rome-Beijing flight, presumably for commercial reasons. They can afford to pay a few quid to rebook you on another airline. They just don't want to.

Thanks for the info! I guess all of that makes sense.

wxuk

mad_rich wrote: »

Basically, the inventory management system (the system that decides how many seats to sell and at what price on any given flight) doesn't just split up between First/ Business/ Economy.

It splits each of those up into several sub-classes. So you might have Economy split into, say, eight classes. The most expensive, flexible fares can be booked into any class, but the cheaper fares are only available on flights with availability in the more restricted lower classes.

On a flight which is looking quite empty, they will try to stimulate demand by opening up all the classes (i.e. allowing anyone at any fare on). When the flights are busier, they start restricting which passengers (at which fares) they want. On the busiest flights, they might only allow full-fare tickets.

It's all about getting the cabin as full as possible while maximising revenue.

Now, all this is very good until it comes to getting rebooked (through no fault of your own). They are saying you have a cheap economy ticket, therefore they will only rebook you onto flights which have availability in the cheap classes. This is particularly important for them if they are rebooking you onto a rival airline, where they will have to pay for your ticket.

But this is where you have to play hardball. They cancelled the Rome-Beijing flight, presumably for commercial reasons. They can afford to pay a few quid to rebook you on another airline. They just don't want to.

yes , but they must have done some maths before they decided to cancel the flights, otherwise, they should just fly it if it would be cheaper option.

plunet

Thanks for the updates BristolStu, very useful.

The way I'm looking at this is I have an issued eticket that is to get me from A to B, Alitalia have contractually committed to that journey and I'm protected by EU law and travel insurance. I've also had an e-mail from Alitalia saying my flights are cancelled, but customer disservice will be in touch with me.

So I'm probably going to sit tight at the moment, and wait to see if they contact me. If they don't contact me it could be even interesting to just turn up at the airport and see what they have to scramble around to do at the last minute to reroute me. I just would prefer not to fly Aeroflot, which is unfortunately one of the SkyTeam partners.

It seems like they've done this a bit back to front. They should have silently stopped selling seats and then worked out how to deal with their contractual commitments without having the phone ring off the hook from lots of worried customers, and then announced that the route was cancelled and have all the details sorted for everyone who phones up.

Anyone would think this was a lame startup airline with no experience of running a scheduled passenger air service. Opps.

wxuk

What if they just send back the payment back to your credit card without telling you?

Ich_2

Whilst not in defence of alitalia, bear in mind that they are virtually bankrupt and were only surviving on illegal government subsidies that about which the EU is less than happy !
So they will be trying to get out of their commitments in the cheapest way possible!!

A lot of airlines are in "alliances" so they will try to re-book onto their partners first as this is the lowest cost option for them.

They are part of Sky Team: -
Aeroflot
Aerolineas
Aeromexico
Air Europa
Air France
Alitalia
China Airlines
China Eastern
China Southern
Czech Airlines
Delta Air Lines
Kenya Airways
KLM
Korean Air
Middle East Airlines
Saudia
TAROM
Vietnam Airlines
Xiamen Air
So look to these for alternate flights first.

Of course another though is that the flight may have been operated by one of the partners with an Alitalia flight number which is common, it might have been the other Airline that cancelled the route. This could make Alitalia less likely to assist!

jpsartre

Ich wrote: »

Of course another though is that the flight may have been operated by one of the partners with an Alitalia flight number which is common, it might have been the other Airline that cancelled the route.

No, it's Alitalia's route that has been dropped (from March 4).

Ich_2

So they were the operating carrier