Best airline for flight to Rome

We flew on Aer Lingus from JFK to Dublin to Rome in 2008 and will do so again TOMORROW. Aer Lingus was fanstastic the first time around. Comfortable, clean, on-time, every step of the way. And the prices were much more competitive than US airlines. They only fly to Dublin or Shannon from the United Stated, but then they have hundreds of connections all over Europe.

We have flown Alitalia before and it has been ok. Service seems to have gone down since their financial problems.

Another minus for Alitalia is the very restrictive carry on allowance, the cabin bag cannot weigh more than 5 kilos or 11 lbs.

Generally European airlines have a better reputation than their US counterparts. Alitalia probably has the worst or one of the worst reputations among European airlines though. I flew them in 2007 and the trip was perfectly fine.

All other things (price, schedules, transfers, etc.) being equal, you might consider the US airline just because it may be easier to deal with them if something goes wrong and you have to reschedule, find missing luggages, etc.

This is a link to a thread that ran here from 2007 to 2009 with many reviews posted about Alitalia

http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm?fuseaction=readtopic&topicID=4370&page=3

rather than specific airlines, I'd first focus on what flights you can get. If there's a connection, I always try to take flights that have that connection in Europe. There are many more flights within Europe than there are flights across the Atlantic. So if you miss your connection due to some flight delay, if you're standing in Europe already odds are the delay will be at most a few hours. If you're standing in NY or Boston all the flights out may be full and the delay could stretch into overnite or even longer.

Thanks for the advise. I want to avoid going anywhere near the UK and potential volcanic ash problems, so US carriers are my best options.