Crazy, Confusing Cartography Causing Consternation
 

Trying to reconcile the disparate seat maps on Alitalia 609 (DL 1040) for JFK-FCO travel (March 14).
DL seat map indicates 8 across in Business, while the AL map shows a (more credible) 4 across.
The operating carrier is Alitalia, using a 777-200/200ER.
I tend to believe Alitalia's map, but cannot get an answer from reps at either carrier about the glaring inconsistency.
Any thoughts on how to resolve the issue and choose seats that actually exist?

It's a 3-class AC with a comfort-economy-type 2-4-2 (classica plus) having standard eonomy seats but a bit more pitch and gaps between the seats (regular economy is 3-4-3). The Magnifica class is 1-2-1.

Thanks.
That's consistent with the map on the Alitalia site.
What's the deal with the Delta site and the misleading map?

Probably just a DL glitch that no one noticed before. Hopefully they will monitor this thread and fix it.

And you get bonus points for best thread title alliteration. ^

I absolutely agree ^

It probably has to do with the way Alitalia numbers the flat-bed seats in Magnifica(Business Class).

As NHS says, it's 1-2-1, but they differentiate the seat letter by the positioning of the seat against the aisle or against the window. This is unlike DL where they only use A-D. Alitalia actually uses 8 letters (A,C,D,E,G,H,J,L) but only 4 letters are used on a single row.

For example, a seat on the left side that is up against the window and has a console on the right between the seat and the aisle is lettered A. A seat that is against the aisle with its console on the left by the window is lettered C. Same thing with the center section seats (which also include the honeymoon seats E&G that are right next to each other).

It's quite convenient because you know the exact positioning of the seat without having to remember which rows on which aircraft are positioned in which way as you do on DL.

DL.com's seat maps aren't sophsticated enough to handle this because it's not a paradigm that DL uses itself. It assumes that each row is lettered in the exact same way.

More than likely you will find that on the DL.com seat map, every other seat is marked as occupied, due to the fact that it actually doesn't exist.


EDITED to add:

Since as they say a picture paints a thousand words, here's a little schematic of a sample cabin layout to show what I'm talking about. The dashes (-) represent the consoles, and the vertical lines are the aisles.

I recently flew JFK-FCO on AZ, and I believe 18sas is correct. It was needlessly confusing.