Best way to Bologna from California

I live in Northern California and usually travel/fly to LAX and then fly as far east as I can. The flights to Europe will leave in the afternoon from LAX and you can get at least as far as London in one hop (British Airways or their partners). That allows you to sleep most of the way and wake up in Europe. There will not be direct flights to Bologna as it is not a big city/airport. If you travel on Air France you will be able to get as far as Paris in hop, Iberia then as far as Madrid. The worst thing a person from the west coast can do is get a flight that stops in the middle or east coast as that add hours to the flight time and you will have to be awake rather than sleeping

Until recently, I lived in the Bay Area. Best options were usually United/Lufthansa, with a change at FRA. However , given how awful United has become, I’ll be looking for alternatives. Check if Delta/AF has flights from CDG to Bologna.

A quick look at skyscanner.com shows multiple one stop choices from either SFO or LAX.

The Italians I work with fly Bologna/Frankfurt/SFO on Lufthansa because there is only one change and they can fly Premium Economy at company expense.

We were just in Bologna where we met up with my sister and her husband
They flew Lufthansa LAX-FRA-BLQ
Took about 14 hours I believe

You can fly to BLQ with only one layover via FRA or MUC (United/Lufthansa), via CDG (Delta/Air France), via LHR (British Airways/American) via AMS (KLM/Delta)., via MAD (Iberia). I’ve done it a few times from SFO via FRA and CDG.

Can you fly direct to Venice and take a train to Bologna? That’s how we went. We spent the last night in a Venice mainland hotel before flying home, but the direct flight back to the US was late enough that some might be comfortable staying in Bologna the night before and catching an early train.

The only non stop (seasonal) flight from California to Italy is with ITA Airways from LAX to Rome FCO. If your home airport is LAX that is another option. Then from FCO you can fly to BLQ with ITA, or take a train.

Thanks to everyone who gave such excellent advice/information. I really appreciate it.

Bologna isn't a big airport, but being very important the area for business there are several daily connections to any most important city of Europe (Frankfurt, London, Paris, Rome, Munich, Madrid, Amsterdam...). If you can directly fly to an European capital you will find a connection to Bologna with only one stop.
In the past I traveled sometimes to California, but I need to go to San Josè that wasn't directly connected to Europe, so I must do two stops. From Los Angeles instead is an easier route.

@ricky
San Jose is not directly connected to Europe (at least not now, since previously Lufthansa had a flight to Frankfurt), however, coming from Vignola, which is not far from Bologna (BLQ), I would look for a flight from BLQ to San Francisco (SFO) instead of San Jose (SJC). SFO is only 40 min drive from the city of San Jose, and SFO has lots of flights to European gateways from which you can fly from Bologna, therefore limiting your layovers to one only, instead of two. Also, in my experience, flights from SFO to Europe (or viceversa) are always cheaper than from SJC.

British Airways has direct flights from SJC ( San Jose CA) to London, where you can connect to the BA flight to Bologna 3 flights a day). Using dates in March, I found the RT price to be the same from SJC as from SFO ($907 RT for Economy Basic).

We rented an apartment in Bologna for 2 weeks, we found it on Trip Advisor, it was a very good experience renting with Trip Advisor.