We all know that airline travel is a necessary evil. I certaintly experienced that on my recent trip to Sicily on Air One. But I also had an excellent flights on Swiss Air, British Air and American.

The positive first-Swiss Air staff were lovely, the seats comfortable and the food pretty good for airline food and there were on time. The best part of going through Zurich was the wonderful dayroom, where for $37, I slept for 2 hours on a comfortable bed and toook a shower before my connecting flight to Rome.(Thanks for that tip Kate, it was worth every penny!)
My flight on BA from Rome to London went smoothly although it drives me nuts that you have to go through another security check when connecting through London-didn't we just get off a plane that we wouldn't have been allowed onto without clearing security? ) My AA flight home to Boston was on time and miracle of miracles it was noy sold out so I had 2 seats to myself to stretch out on ! It makes me wonder if flying on a Thursday is a good travel day for less traffic.

The horrible experience was on Air One (Bob the navigator did try to warn me!). The day before my flight I was informed by email that my flight to Palermo had been cancelled and that they would put me on the 9 pm flight. That would now make for a 7 hour layover at the Rome airport. As it was a Holiday weekend, everything else was sold out and I had no other options. That was bad enough but I later found out that theyhad cancelled the flight in March and let me know the day before take-off!!

At least I knew what I was in for and had a seat on a later flight. Not so for 2 other poor ladies from my tour group. That had booked through US Air and US Air knew nothing about the cancelled Air One flight-again cancelled in March(they had an ealier flight then mine that was also cancelled). So they arrived in Rome with no prior knowledge and the airline did NOTHING to help them. Did not get them on another flight, no food or hotel vouchers.(Luckily there was a room available at the airpot Hilton). They were not able to get on another flight until noon the next day on another airline standby!!!

So they basically lost the first day and a half of their vacation and recieved no help or compensation from Air One. They are of course going to appeal this situation. But a long story short-I would avoid Air One at alll costs!!!

[title spelling corrected to help search engine]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Colleen,

All in all, your airline experiences sound pretty positive. We can't hope for perfection, I guess.

I have traveled enough in my career, by air, to come to this one conclusion... if you want consistency, and at least some recourse if things go wrong, you need to fly with a name carrier... AA, USAir, Delta, Alitalia, Swissair, whatever.

Whenever I had flown or planned to fly on the smaller carriers who offer great bargain fares, I always ended up with cancellations, delays, no compensation and worse... bankruptcy!

The old adage holds true... "if it sounds too good to be true...it isn't"

I had a holiday trip planned for my daughter and granddaughters, planned on Christmas Eve, to fly from NY to Florida and two weeks before her departure, the airline went under and I had to do the mad scramble to find another carrier TO BUY new airfare as the other carrier would only issue a credit if the original purchase was done on a credit card. I got all my money back but the stress is far too much.

Doug

In defense of budgie airlines, I'm flying Parma-London-Rome for $75 on Ryanair Sacramento-Los Angeles will cost me that just one way.

I agree Rar, this is the first bad experience I've had with one. Meridiana was great from Catina to Florence and I have flown Ryanair before without problems. I just thought the way the 2 ladies were treated by Air One was inexcusable. They are an off shoot of Lufthansa, so I would have expected better.

In my case, a fair number of budget flights, no bad experiences. I've certainly known people who had bad experiences on named carriers (although I haven't).

oh no Colleen, I have had such great luck with AirOne and now I am going to cringe if I have to use them again!! grrrrrr

This is scaring this 'first time in 30 years' traveller to Europe. Any thoughts on Transavia?

I don't know that airline but I would just be sure to confirm and re-confirm your flights before hand.

We just flew Continental to Rome last week in steerage (tourist class) and we found it to have good leg room, service was good and the food going over to Rome was not good, coming back was good.

I usually choose window seats, but I learned not to do it on a Continental 777, where seat back entertainment control units take up most of the space under the seat. The aisle seats may also have these units, but it's easier to keep your carry-on in the overhead bins there and free up some legroom. Check www.seatguru.com and the statement at the top for your aircraft for this type of information.

I hate airplanes, but the best flight I've ever had was on Virgin. Naturally they don't go everywhere, so it's not always possible to use them, but I was in coach and I had what in other airlines would be called a first-class experience. Sure, there wasn't as much room as there was in a first-class seat, but we were "fed and watered" like every 15 minutes! They also gave everyone a little pack of handy items like earplugs, a deck of cards, a pad of paper and pencil, an eye cover, and even a pair of socks to warm your feet! Now, I'm sure I could have bought all of those items myself, but just having them given to me made me feel like these people cared about my comfort. Also, each seat had a little TV screen (okay I'm sure this is standard now, but it wasn't when I flew with them) and a ton of movies I could watch at any time I liked. Instead of being bored out of my mind for 8 hours, I watched three movies! (I just can't enjoy reading on planes for some reason... nerves or excitement maybe?)

The worst flight ever was not actually about the flight... I tried booking tickets with Travelocity. I was in another country at the time and the flight didn't permit those tickets you get when you arrive at the airport, so I had to have it sent to me. Well, it never arrived. Travelocity blamed it on the airline, the airline blamed it on Travelocity, and neither one wanted to give me another ticket, even for the same seat I already purchased! This went on and on, and in the meantime I missed the flight and my week in Hong Kong because they couldn't get it together. Then I had to take a nightmare train ride to my next destination. Did I get my money back? Nope.