Alitalia and Carry-On Baggage
 

I know that the AZ rules are pretty strict in terms of carry-on baggage, in terms of both size and weight. In practice, how strictly is it enforced, especially for SkyTeam Elite Plus members? I have not flown AZ in many years, but now that CO is part of SkyTeam (and if AZ survives), I may try it again.

A few months ago, checking in at Pisa for a jump to Milan (connecting to ORD) the ticket agent did point out my carry-on was 3 or 4 kilos over. I told her it just had a couple bottles of wine, sandwich, and water; she told me to eat the sandwich before boarding.

I did, which reduced the weight of the carry-on but increased the weight of the PAX. :)

My experience is that it helps to:

I have often overweight carry-on baggage and only very occasionally I have had problems with AZ.

I see this as one of the reasons to choose for AZ on the route BRU-FCO where they have a lot of competition from e.g. TV which has a very strickt carry-on policy.

That is one of the reasons I have given up on its sister, VS.

I flew two weeks ago from Zurich to Malpensa on a Embraer 145. The gate agent tagged as many as possible bags to make sure we saved time boarding and everyone understood that the overhead bins are tiny on this kind of plane. As usual some American tries to get on with a laptop bag big enought to store an entire ofice, his folding wardrobe and a suitcase big enough to put his family in. He argued that AZ would not take of his bags and held everyone up for almost 15 minutes. He was quickly advised to either check them in or find another means to travel by another passenger. :confused:

I've flown this route a couple of times - my rollaboard only just doesn't fit into the bin. :p ... rather it does fit, but then the bin doesn't close. Whoops.

I can't understand anyone making a giant fuss about it on this route - any carry-on that you need to check can be picked up as you leave the aircraft! Must add all of thirty seconds to your journey.

I flew BOS-MXP in April with an overweight (I think it was about 10kg and their webpage says 5kg limit) but properly sized carry-on (fit in the tester bin and the overhead bin the correct way). They didn't bother weighing it, just asked me if it would fit in the tester bin. BTW: I have no status or anything within SkyTeam.

This guy seemed to think he was a law unto himself and I was amazed after all his fuss, he was actually allowed to fly. IT seems very common to see this kind of thing in Europe, especiallly from Americans who have a culture of taking as much as possible on board and often taking up much needed space of passengers who abide by the rules.

I have even got to the stage now, where I always carry a CD or MP3 player to drown out the ever present Americans who have the ability to talk above any amount of noise and make sure everyone has to listen to their conversations. :mad:

I hope you are not planning on using that CD or MP3 player on the plane -- they are banned by Alitalia.

I always carry too much weight in my carryon but I don't violate the size rules. I can't see where it effects flight safety if I have 10 kilos in the cabin or if they are in the baggage hold. I have found in MXP if you check in at the Prima/Magnifica line, even if you are flying Economy, they don't weigh your carry-on. (I don't know what they would do if it was oversized.)

Really? I would think that the heavier the carry-on, the greater the risk that (during turbulence) bags would burst through the locker door, and the greater the risk of injury to anyone in the flightpath would be.

What the rules say and what the staff do to implement them is another thing. I have seen Alitalia FA sitting at the back reading a magazine with the the MP3 player switched on.

If anyone has ever seen the effect of bags coming out of overhead bins due to turbulance, they just might think again. I am sure we have all and do take overweight and the majority will always try and make sure the size is right. I have seen people hit by objects falling out of overhead bins and I am amazed you never hear of people sustaining serious injury from this as I think it must happen more than we realise.

The incident from Zurich to Milan was crazy, the flight is about 30 minutes, they tag your luggage and have it at the steps when you get off, what more can you ask for.

Well, other times one has to wait 30 minutes for the baggage to arrive and sometimes it misconnects (as has happened all too often to me) or it is stolen along the way. When I take it on board, it gets there on time. Another nuisance is airlines like VS and BA that have different weight limits in F C and Y. What they call safety is really economic (is safety different in F or Y? Actually if something falls on someone in F, the damage might be greater as the people up front are the more "valuable" passengers) and that is why they do not get my money anymore. Frankly, that is an important factor in my choice of airlines and in this time where airlines are under financial pressures, it costs them nothing to make life easy for its passengers.

Things happen, but on most US airlines, carry-on rules are pretty liberal and the process generally works. Sure there is the occasional accident, but so are coffee spills.

Nick, what you say may be true but I am talking about reasonable amounts of overweight -- well within the standards of what would be permissable on U.S. airlines.

I have a trolley-type piece of luggage that I bought in the ATL airport. It is especially designed for air travel as it has a section which allows me to take out a laptop computer for the TSA without opening the whole thing. It is not particularly large and is well within the "Size-Wise" dimensions allowed by SkyTeam.

However, with my IBM laptop inside, it weighs 7 kilos. Once I add a few more things that I want with me during the flight it generally comes to about 10 kilos.

Delta feels that I can safely put 18 kilos in my hand luggage, so I can't see where I am endangering anyone by packing 10 kilos on AZ.

Passenger density is generally much lower in F and C. Safe loads for the lockers are probably the same.

The bins are actually rated to hold quite a bit. Off the top of my head 180 lbs. on many planes. That does not explain the difference between 6 KG and 18 KG as the carry-on limit in Y and F on BA.

It is plainly economic and in the long run just another way to make traveling inconvenient for customers.

On most US carriers people do bring lots on board and, although not perfect, the system works and is a tremendous convenience and probably saves the airline all the costs of processing baggage and lost and damaged bags.

I had a claim with VS not too long ago, but would have cost them nothing if I had been able to take my bag on board.

For every linear foot of overhead locker space (and, by extension, pound of locker capacity), I bet there are more than three times as many people in Y as there are in F.

But this is getting a bit offtopic.

Why is it purely economic? If a pax can't take their luggage on board, it has to be loaded underneath. This is a cost, if anything, not a saving.

It's both safety and convenience. Look at the reports on the BD Kegworth crash in 1989. There were people decapitated and given broken necks by falling luggage. It resulted in a change of design of the lockers, but really, does show what an impact excessive carry-on can have in an emergency situation. Those were avoidable deaths.

And convenience, of course. Do you really want to have to turn up to the gate early and fight to get on, only to find that the only locker space is 20 rows back or under the seat in front? Do you really want to have to have extended turnaround and boarding times, because of the amount of stuff people are taking on with them? Not to mention the constant banging of the shoulders and face when sat in aisle seats and while waiting for disembarkation.

Personally, I'm please to fly on airlines that do have a restrictive carry-on policy. It's a much more pleasant experience on departure and arrival. Horror of horrors, I usually do check luggage on my regular weekly flight. There are ways to pass the 10 minutes I usually have to wait. Coffee, cigarettes, crossword...

EasyJet have just removed a lot of their size restriction and all weight restrictions on carry-on. I won't be flying with them again if I can help it. Boarding's already enough of a melee without having to deal with oversized carry-ons.

Anybody have any recent experience with this...another thread has discussed some recent changes and consensus seems to be that dvd/laptop/game boy type items are now OK??

I flew AZ CDG-MXP today and discussed this with the purser on the flight. He said that everybody at AZ knows there is no safety problem but that the government refuses to allow them.

He said that AZ has been fighting this because they know it costs them passesngers -- especially families on long flights.

To clarify, I believe that AZ only has a particular problem with 'digital audio players' - i.e. CD players, DVD players, iPods etc. There is no problem to use a laptop on an AZ flight - the announcement says 'not connected to printers or CD readers', but this is interpreted to mean 'as long as you don't have a CD in the drive' in my experience.

No idea about Gameboys though.

What about connecting?
 

We are connecting onto AZ in MXP after arriving from ATL. Will they weigh our carryon in MXP? We are travelling with a small child and our carryon meats Delta's size and weight requirements, but will be a little over in the weight department according to AZ regulations.

If you have BPs to you final destination nobody would check the weight,they are too busy with security.

Anyone know if Alitalia does cattle call boarding or is it an orderly process in MXP? What about preboarding with a child?

Nobody will check your baggage weight and there is no such thing as an "orderly process" for anything in Italy.

No luggage weight checks or size checks at the gates. With a BP, you will go directly to the gate.

I do not recall any security from USA to a continuing AZ flight at MXP.

The "preboard" on most flights consists of a long line onto a bus. Quite a bit of indeference to the line, since the bus is not final destination. The planes load at both ends. If the plane is one of the smaller ones, you will be required to relinquish your luggage at planeside on the tarmack, as it does not fit inside the plane. In the past, on some of the really small planes, the luggage is thrown into a shelf like affair on the back of the plane, and a net pulled up to retain the luggage.

The last time we went through MXP, the bus drivers were on strike.

You have to go through a security check (but no shoe carnival) and passport control. Both are generally quite smooth, but sometimes passport gets a long line if there are a few other flights coming in at the same time.

Gameboys are not allowed either. My son is only allowed to play it on long car or plane trips: strictly a treat. Not that time. :td:

At the risk of being overly repetitive: AZ doesn't have any problem with digital audio players. It does have one with laser-based means of sound/data reproduction (i.e. CD/DVD).
I can't imagine a Gameboy not being allowed, I raise very few eyebrows using my PDA inflight.

Graraps, your first paragraph is right.

I have, however, seen an AZ Flight Attendant tell a child that he can not use his Gameboy.

More likely to be a misinformed/technologically challenged FA than anything else. Last night I was told by an FA that I couldn't use my PDA. I told her that I was certain I could, she said she'd check with the captain and came back to tell me that I was free to use it till descent started! :D

On a FCO-LHR flight last weekend, I had a really nasty FA come around and insist I turn my laptop off becuase it had a CD-ROM drive. It gave me great pleasure to simply remove the modular drive (thank you DELL) and replace it with a spare battery, while his face turned progressively red.

That's the only issue I've had with using the laptop on 30+ Alitalia flights this year.

On another note though, they have become progressively stricter with Digital Cameras. I almost always have mine in the seat pocket during the flight in case anything photo-worthy pops up, and I'd say about 1/3 of the time recently they politely request me not to use it inflight. Still, it is far from consistent. I have had some FA's offer to take pictures for me and others insist that it was not allowed on the same flight!

If you served the kind of meals available on AZ would you want people taking pictures of them????

To be fair to Alitalia, their longhaul catering in Economy is actually well above average when compared to BA, Lufthansa, Air France, Swiss or KLM.

The intra-European "Alisnack" is vile however, with the sole exception of the breakfast box variant featuring the sponge cake and the chocolate-chip yogurt.

I can tell you that their medium haul meals (to Israel) are considerably below the quality of either AF or LY.

This is true both in Coach and Prima.

Vienna to Milan on an ERJ Dec 04, flight attendant told my son to turn his off and pointed to the safety card. It was on there.

How's their longhaul catering?