ITA Airlines

I am so sorry about your loss of your daughter.

Do you have travel insurance or would the credit card you purchased your ticket on provide you coverage for your extra costs?

ITA has three classes of tickets. The Basic one does not allow for any changes, Classic does with a fee and the difference in price of the ticket. Flex is the fully flexible one. i haven't found airlines generally to be very accommodating regardless of reason unless your ticket allows for changes. People who get exceptions seem to have status at an airline.

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Several years ago, when my father passed away, and had to buy a ticket for the next day, Delta wanted to charge me a penalty for purchasing the ticket with less than 24 h in advance. I ended up flying Lufthansa, who gave me a bereavement fare, but just to let you know that there is no limit to tackiness by airlines when it comes to making money. Not sure if Delta has the same practice nowadays.

From Allianz describing their trip interruption coverage:

These benefits can reimburse you for nonrefundable trip expenses if you must cancel or interrupt your trip due to the covered serious illness or injury of a family member (among other covered reasons). The injury, illness, or medical condition must be considered life threatening by a physician or require hospitalization.

In addition, many policies include the services of a travel concierge, which may be able to help with arranging for emergence transportation - this service may also be offered by your credit card.

But a truly horrifying situation.

I just booked a trip for next April, at the time flying in & out of Rome. And when researching, the downright cheap fares out of ITA were tempting indeed.

Until I started to read the reviews. Yikes--no way. Because it's also around Holy Week in Rome, I decided to avoid Roma Fiumicino altogether, flying into Florence on Swiss Air and Helvetic through Zurich, then train to Rome, Salerno, and Taormina in Sicily. Flying home out of Catania all Lufthansa through Munich.