airtravel to and from Rome

All your choices depend on where you're starting from. ("The West Coast" is a pretty huge area.) From Seattle, we like the non-stop "polar" flights to get us to Europe and then do a connecting flight into Italy. There are about five airlines that do those.

I don't know of any airlines that fly direct from the West Coast to Italy (man I wish!) which means you have to change planes either on the East Coast or in Europe (London, Frankfurt, etc.)

If you're flying from Hawaii, you'd likely have to change planes twice: on the West Coast (probably California?), and again in London/Frankfurt, etc. to get to Italy, so I might suggest trying to fly from Hawaii to the East Coast (New York, WA DC, Atlanta?) and get a direct flight to Italy from there, if possible, to save yourself a plane change.

Otherwise, the suggestion of flying the polar route to Europe and changing planes there is a good one. Lufthansa flies to Frankfurt from Portland (and from Seattle starting in March), and I know they fly to Venice, Florence, and Rome as well. From Seattle, there is a direct flight to Amsterdam on KLM/Northwest, and to Paris on Air France. A couple direct flights to London as well (not recommended). I don't know who flies out of California.

Aside from the other posts, there will be a new Portland - Amsterdam flight starting in late March. I've taken the Lufthansa PDX-Frankfurt flight, then a short flight to Italy from there.

Try http://www.vayama.com/ it shows various routes to Europe that might help you visualize a travel plan.

I just booked my tickets last night from Seattle to Rome and then home from Milan. We are flying through Copenhagen (SAS) on the way and then Frankfort -United (Luftansa) on the way home.

My only requirement was to fly overseas before I had to change plans. Thinking I'd rather get stuck in Europe than the US if weather or connections had problems.

I did a ton of searching on just about every travel/cheap airfare website I could find - I've been searching since November on and off. I ended up using cheaptickets.com. I tried direct with the airlines as well and either just got lucky or it's a great site - but I got the best fare I could find on the route I wanted.

I also was trying to avoid flying through Heathrow because my friend who is a travel agent said they have a history of many more delays, lost luggage, etc than other airports. Not sure if it's true - but she travels a lot more than I do.

Good luck.