I've been in Italy a number of times, but never had any travel plans affected by strikes. Now I read that the day I am to return home, a 4 hour strike of air traffic controllers is called -- just about the time I am to depart Florence. Do all of the called strikes actually take place? Would it be a good idea to try and change the date of my flight home (it would be a great excuse to stay longer -- but I have concert tickets here for Anne-Sofie Mutter, whom I've wanted to hear for years)? -- gedlin

Hi Gedlin

A couple of years ago, I arrived in Milan planning to connect to Florence and unexpectedly came upon a similar strike for domestic flights. After about an hour, the airline just put us on a bus to Florence. It was not pleasant, but I did arrive just a few hours late.

I realize this is not the same as a strike when you are due to leave, but my point was that everyone appeared to take it in stride.

Of course, if you can simply take another day in Florence.....

In my limited experience, a strike happens exactly when they say it will! If you can change your tickets without penalty, I would try to do so. If not, try calling the airlines the day of the strike to reschedule. (Of course, the airline will do everything within its power to get you out as soon as the strike is over, if that's what you want, but they'd probably be relieved if you were willing to let them reschedule you for the next day...)

Perhaps hearing about our strike experience may help: When we returned from Rome this past January, we got to FCO only to discover that an 8-hour Italy-wide air traffic controller's strike had been called. We had to make a connection in Paris for our flight back to NYC and so were frantic to get on the first flight out after the strike was over -- but there turned out to be a computer malfunction at FCO in addition to the strike that added chaos to the delays, and it turned out the computer had reshuffled all Alitalia passengers heading west ONTO THE SAME FLIGHT (some 1700 people...) -- needless to say, not only did we not get out when the airline said we would, we more than missed our connection in Paris! In the end, we sat at FCO from 10am until 9pm (having been told initially to present ourselves at 3pm to check into our rescheduled noon flight to Paris), arrived in Paris at midnight, hustled ourselves back to the airport by 9am to try and make the 11am flight to New York that the airline had promised us, only to find that it was overbooked and we had been reshuffled onto the 5:50pm flight...in the end, we spent approximately 32 hours hanging around in airports (that includes the 7 hours we spent sleeping at the airport hotel in Paris), and if I had it to do over again, I would have tried to just reschedule our flight to the following afternoon to begin with, allowing us another relaxing day in Italy!

Hi What do you all think the odds are of a flight leaving MXP for the short flight to Venice on March 5? Arriving from ORD at 8:30 am and the flight is sceduled to depart MXP at 10:05--the alitalia pilot strike is supposed to start at 10 am? By the way the seekitaly.com website has a detailed listing of who is striking in the next few weeks including the exact times--but I don't know how reliable this source is.

Callie S.

If there is a strike called for the day you are supposed to travel, for heaven's sake change your travel date. I am always amazed when watching the news reports just after a transportation strike to see the chaos and the numbers of would-be passengers stranded and milling around the airport. Strikes are announced well in advance - take advantage of that. There are enough delays and stresses in air travel on a normal day, don't put yourself through the extra hassle. If the airline will cooperate and change your flight time or date without charge, then do it.
Marie Marko

Well we also got caught out in the strike in January and not speaking a word of Italian (well maybe one or two) we had absolutely no idea that a traffic controllers strike had been called. One of my kids did mention the night before that there were airport scenes on the TV news but not understanding Italian we didn't realise. Even our hotel never mentioned anything when we checked out. After arriving at the airport we noticed that there were no departures listed on the departure screen between 10 -6 and it was only after joining an enourmous queue at the British Airways counter did we actually learn of the strike.

Marion, you are right when you say that they seem to take it in their stride. Italians are obviously so used to it that they don't even think the event worthy of signage - at the airport there were no signs, announcements, nothing. The event was extremely inconvenient for our family. We spent over 12 hours at Rome airport (and there's not a lot to do there either) since our original flight was 11am to London arriving early afternoon. We finally left at 9.20pm and arrived 11.30pm in London just in time to catch the tube to our hotel - the entire day was wasted. We finally reached out hotel at 12.30am.

If you can avoid this inconvenience then I would recommend you do so - don't take any chances!