Fire at FCO Terminal 3 UPDATE

Zoe I am sorry to hear of the situation. This is difficult for all and hopefully there have been no injuries there.

My husband and I originally were scheduled to depart Boston for Rome, tomorrow Sunday May 10. I received an e-mail overnight which reads:

Blockquote
Dear Customer,
We are sorry to inform you that your flight has undergone a change.
We apologize for the inconvenience and we inform you that will be contacted by the Customer Center for more information and assistance.
Best regards.
Alitalia
Blockquote

Because we *cancelled this booking in March* I had to call Alitalia by phone this morning to straighten them out that.
I'll spare you the long story of their errors in dealing with our reservation which was made last October.

So if we were still scheduled for Sunday's flight perhaps their e-mail to us overnight is perhaps due to this fire and the rescheduling of flights needed to be done. After a long 25 minutes with the Alitalia agent today, he said I was lucky to get a

refund
Blockquote as this flight was now cancelled. The
refund comment is part of the long story.

I wish no one but good but have found Alitalia to be of such poor customer service. I will never book through them again.

We rebooked our travel through Delta for October. I understand the codesharing and we do have an Alitalia flight between Rome and Sicily. But we have no stress about the reservation and tickets since Delta controls it versus Alitalia.

Hope you get out in a timely and safe manner.
Diane

The agent today never mentioned the fire to me. I'm surprised I missed this in the news since I track European headlines.
The fire was Thursday evening. I'm assuming you're in Rome? Were you notified not to come to the airport and just went anyway to see if you could a flight out to Palmero?

Zoe thank you for these updates. So sorry you are caught like this, thank goodness you are a seasoned traveler and can handle it. We fly out from San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon. United to Frankfurt to Rome. I am not going to get too stressed. I hope they are in better shape by then. I have heard nothing from people about Lufthansa and those connections. So far all the trouble seems to be with Alitalia. Maybe that is just wishful thinking on my part. If I look up our reservation it probably won't say anything this far a head. Well good luck at least you made it to Italy! Keep us posted.
Judy

Zoe,

Everyone affected here is trying to help, so please bring patience.

Great words of wisdom Zoe!

Hopefully the rest of your trip will be great!

I am in Napoli, my train to Palermo leaves in an hour, so I will arrive sooner than if I had waited at FCO for tonight's flight, which may be cancelled or overbooked - there was no guarantee. By the time I got back to the transit desk, all the Alitalia hotel rooms were booked, so I was on my own (with lots of sympathy).

So, €200 and 24 hours later, I am on my way again. I opted to take the train from Roma Termini to Napoli Centrale last night, got a hotel room so I could sleep once in 40 hours. Hotel Terminus across the street from the station, if you arrive without a reservation, this hotel is big (but I got their last room). Excellent service and breakfast (never too busy to write a hotel review).

Moral of the story: always budget for one extra day, including transportation expense.

This concludes my FCO saga. Thank you all for your encouragement and support.

By the way, it's the airport authority that is forcing Alitalia and other carriers to cancel/change flights, not the airlines. So it's not their fault. Customer service is a separate issue, but this experience shows me that it's a flawed customer service system, the agents on the ground are trying their best.

Zoe,

Hope the rest of your trip goes well.

Buon Viaggio!

Zoe, you are a trooper; applause for your cool head, tenacity and resourcefulness! Hope the rest of your trip goes off without any more hitches in the giddyup!

Man! It just goes to show you that all the preparation & research in the world doesn't mean squat sometimes, even for the most seasoned of travelers--right, Zoe? I tell people that want to travel to Europe--expect the unexpected!

But Rome Fiumicino holds a special place in the dark recesses of my heart. Once was definitely enough--five years ago, non-stop round-trip from Chicago, and then connections to and from Catania (Sicily), and then to & from Florence. This was before I discovered the wonders of European train travel. Unless one has a working knowledge of the Italian language--I didn't then and some would say I still don't now--you are at a distinct disadvantage. We flew Alitalia as well, and almost missed the connection to Catania simply because the Alitalia staff were so unhelpful, although they were always very sympathetic. This sympathy did me no good whatsoever, when we had stood in the wrong line for an hour & could not get a straight answer from anyone.

And I will say upfront that I am of Italian descent, but I have never, ever seen more airport workers more concerned about how they look instead of assisting passengers. It was like Project Runway--the preening, the jibber-jabbering with each other instead of customers--it was maddening. I will never grace FCO with my presence again--the chaos of Naples' little Capodochino airport was a pleasure in comparison.

Yikes! I just learned about the fire. I'm in Sicily now, with a flight tomorrow (May 11) on Ryan Air from Palermo to FCO. And then a Lufthansa flight on May 12 from FCO to Frankfurt, then on to Denver. I believe both of my FCO flights use Terminal 3.

I have checked in for RyanAir but have received no notifications of any changes. I'll get the Lufthansa online check in notification tomorrow morning. Will keep my fingers crossed and will let you know what happens.

Glad you made it and in a few days, just a bad memory! It is very frustrating from this end to have NO information, I can't even find a news article update. No word from any of the carrier over here at this point. My flight is a full week into it, and sure hope we actually get there! Really by your reporting doesn't sound good on your end.

According to Il Messagero today:

[Early this morning] it was possible to re-open a path to Terminal 3 to enable passengers to reach the boarding area G, through the train, and H dedicated to international flights. Almost all check-in counters in Terminal 3 are open again.

Chatter on airline-oriented message boards (unofficial information, to be sure) indicates that long-haul service is less affected than are shorter flights; that Alitalia, EasyJet and RyanAir continue to cancel a significant number of flights. Some airlines are substituting larger aircraft to accommodate affected passengers.

Jeff's info seems to be right, the domestic flights on Alitalia were the biggest problem.

Diane and others expecting notifications, I didn't go to the airport hoping for the best, I was not notified but when I did online check-in, I was okay to check in on DTW-AMS, but got a "not possible to check in online" for AMS-FCO and FCO-PMO. That's not exactly a notification, but it's a clue, so be cautious.

Thanks again, everyone. I'm hoping my domestic flight from CAT-FCO is okay in three weeks!

So good to hear you've arrived. You keep a cool head and though of alternatives to reach your destination.
Forecast for sicily looks lovely. Enjoy your time. Thanks for the travel lessons and tips.

You're welcome, Diane. Good luck everyone!

I'm hoping my domestic flight from CAT-FCO is okay in three weeks!

3 weeks in Sicilia - wonderful. Enjoy every minute - are the wildflowers flourishing? I will pray that Etna stays quiet so you can get to Roma on schedule.

FYI: Okay so I was told this flight, AZ0615 from BOS May 10 was cancelled. Yet flight status shows it departed Boston and arrived at T3 at FCO.

Remember, this was my original flight which I cancelled back in MARCH. Yet Alitalia sent notification to me Saturday morning about some changes, assuming I was still on this flight. I called them Saturday and that's when a rep said this flight was cancelled.
Glad I wasn't traveling. Poor customer communication and customer service.

Grateful everyone else has arrived or are close to departing as planned. Enjoy!

We are at FCO right now. Flew in on RyanAir from Palermo last night. An earlier flight had been cancelled so I think they sent a larger jet to accommodate passengers from both flights -- it was a very large plane. Baggage claim at FCO was unaffected by the fire.

On the shuttle to our hotel we were talking with a Lufthansa agent who had come in from Venice to help out. Lufthansa lost lots of computers in the fire. They were working with one computer at checkin yesterday. She suggested we get here at least 2 hours early, so we were here at 7:15 for a 10:15 flight to Frankfurt, and there were two Lufthansa checkin stations operating in terminal 3. The burned smell was very strong. All workers are wearing breathing masks. We had checked in online and printed boarding passes so it just took us a few minutes to drop our bags. We went to Terminal 2 for security and were at our gate by 7:45!

The airlines are working hard to minimize the effect on travelers, but I am so sorry for the employees who have to work in that awful smell. There was a lot of damage and this will not be resolved quickly.

We are at FCO right now. Flew in on RyanAir from Palermo last night. An earlier flight had been cancelled so I think they sent a larger jet to accommodate passengers from both flights -- it was a very large plane. Baggage claim at FCO was unaffected by the fire.

On the shuttle to our hotel we were talking with a Lufthansa agent who had come in from Venice to help out. Lufthansa lost lots of computers in the fire. They were working with one computer at checkin yesterday. She suggested we get here at least 2 hours early, so we were here at 7:15 for a 10:15 flight to Frankfurt, and there were two Lufthansa checkin stations operating in terminal 3. The burned smell was very strong. All workers are wearing breathing masks. We had checked in online and printed boarding passes so it just took us a few minutes to drop our bags. We went to Terminal 2 for security and were at our gate by 7:45!

The airlines are working hard to minimize the effect on travelers, but I am so sorry for the employees who have to work in that awful smell. There was a lot of damage and this will not be resolved quickly.

Thank you Charlene! I cannot believe how hard it has been to get an update that wasn't in Italian. We are coming in on Lufthansia, but fly out in three weeks on United straight to US. We do plan on getting there earlier than normal. Have a great trip!

Thanks for continuing the update, Charlene. Apparently the cleanup crews are around the clock, I saw them when I passed Terminal 3 on my way to the Leonardo Express Saturday night.

I went to FCO Terminal 3 last night to pick up my husband. Clean up crews all over the place. Most of the airport and airline employees were wearing face masks which they removed to go outside and smoke a cigarette, with no sense of irony whatsoever. (^_^)

Just received check in email from United, seems to be no changes. They did say on the return flight to add extra time arriving, go to terminal 5 and then all united flights depart from C. I thought it was interesting that they have already given directions for our return trip. I will update after we get in on Thursday through Franvfurt on Lufthasa

I am now sitting at FCO waiting for a 10:50 am flight to DC. The email I received from United said to report to terminal 5 to deposit luggage and take a shuttle to terminal 3 for departure. Since we just have carry ons we came straight to terminal 3 and got thru security very quickly--we were here by 7:45. There is barely any smoke smell, though the workers are wearing masks. Everyone has been helpful.