I don't really understand why Orbitz/Cheaptickets are just capitulating to AZ... its in their best interest for these bookings to be honoured for a few reasons, including the negative goodwill that will be generated against them, the fact that hours and hours of time and resources will be spent cleaning this up and they won't be able to charge anyone for a cent of it, and the fact that by allowing AZ to cancel these, they open themselves up to liability.

I can imagine that threatening to pull all AZ fares off their booking engines would cause Alitalia management to slow down a bit...