Canceling a flight (AZ00706) is understandable but this is just effrontery
 

Hello everyone,
I purchased a ticket from Miami to Istanbul with a connection in Rome for 2.5 hours in early February to fly next week. I received an e-mail from Alitalia last Thursday, just 10 days before the flight, that the second flight was canceled and they arranged me a new flight that leaves 8.5 hours later, making the total wait time 11 hours :eek:
Being a Hobbyist, having flown around the globe many times with many other airlines (like Turkish and Lufthansa) when this kind of long waits are unavoidable they offer their lounges and even arrange hotels in some extreme cases. Since it's not an overnight wait I wasn't expecting an hotel but I expected them to at least offer their lounge to make up for the change. But this wasn't written on the notification e-mail so I called them today to check it and they said they won't be offering their lounge, which made no sense to me:mad:.
I just want the readers here to see the class of service at Alitalia and how much they care for consumer happiness. Please keep my story in mind next time you purchase from this company instead of an actual airline just because it's a handful of euros cheaper.

Alitalia are notorious with delays
 

Alitalia are notorious for delays, so you need to have that in mind.As this guy says in connectionreview, that's not so much of a problem, as the second flight would most probably be delayed too, so you wouldn't miss it:)

in your case it is worse as you knew in advance about the reschedule. By international rules, in such cases, you are allowed to refund your ticket in full and rebook on another airline.

They offered me a refund but it's only 9 days before an international flight, if I canceled and rebooked it would probably be twice the ticket cost :(