Opinion on flight to Rome

I think all you would get is an inch or two of extra leg room in the Classica Plus. No guarantee that you'll have great food. Also flight entertainment is probably the same. If the one at your seat breaks down, it could happen on any seat. My personal policy is to treat a flight like a bus ride, nothing more. I don't take planes with the expectation to be served gourmet food and I don't even care if the staff is rude (and paying more for Premium does not guarantee you better staff either). As long as they take me from point A to B safely at a reasonable price, that's all I care from airlines nowadays. Unless an extra inch or two of leg room is very important to you, I wouldn't spend an extra $200 a pop for that. With $200 I can have 4 great meals at several restaurants in Rome.

I fly only Swiss Air from Chicago, true we go to Zurich first, but what a nice flight Swiss Air is. Good food, lots of food and snacks, free little wine bottles, other free drinks, including juice and water bottles of course, don't remember paying for any food or drinks on the flight, and at least 3 times they came by with hot towels and showed us how they wanted us to wipe our face and neck.
One time I asked 2 flight attendants nearby me how do i get my luggage when the message board said to go straight to our connecting flight? They both smiled and said, "you are not in the US anymore, you are now in Switzerland and this is how we do things here for you, your luggage will be ready for pickup in Firenze." Indeed it was.
I also got a case of "ants in my pants" toward the end of the flight, i kept getting up, squirming, walking back and forth to the bathroom for no good reason, but lucky for me, no one said anything to me, i did settle down before landing.
And i had a beautiful human being in the seat next to me, she was Swiss, and we would help each other get in and out of the seats, hold items for the other, clear the seats, return items, a lovely experience with her next to me. She told me that Europeans fly only Swiss Air.
True the coach seats are a tad close, but with all the nice attention, good food and drinks, hot towels, and room to squirm, i will always fly Swiss Air.
They also fly back here to Chicago O'Hare, i can bypass the Philadelphia Airport, very important to land near my home after 10 hours over the Ocean. Home is where i want to be, true i have to fly back to Zurich, but better a regional flight at the start, not the end.

I agree with most of what Roberto said, except for the part about Economy Plus. On Delta and United you get up to 5 inches more leg room. It makes a lot of difference to my comfort level, especially coming from the west coast, as we do. We only pop for it on the trans-atlantic segment. Food is the same on every line we've used - - BAD. When possible, we bring our own. We've also suffered miserably umcomfortable seats on Lufthansa, as well as foul food. The entertainment can go out on any airline. It happened to us on Delta, both going and returning. What was worse was that on the outbound flight the lights in our section were also on the fritz, so no reading. I filed a complaint with Delta, and they did compensate us with some FF points.

We flew Alitalia between NY and Rome last May and it was surprisingly good service and flight. I would do the economy plus or whatever it is called. The extra few inches makes a big difference especially if over 6' and, imo, well worth it.

Looking at the flight's seat map, economy plus is not just larger seat pitch, but wider seats as well. The seat configuration is 2-3-2, while standard configuration is 2-4-2. You paying $200 extra to fly out of Boston, since Alitalia has a monopoly on nonstops to Rome.

I went to the Alitalia web site, and it appears that on its transatlantic flights, Classica Plus offers a nice mix of benefits, including a separate quiet cabin, priority boarding, specially reclining seats and "up to 40 percent more legroom", among others. Seems like good value to me.

About sharing seats with a beautiful human being, I remember that happened to me once in Switzerland also, many years ago. It was on a train though, not a plane. On an overnight train ride from Lausanne through Zurich to Munich, I woke up to find a really beautiful human being looking right at me in the cabin. We were both about 20 as I recall. Unfortunately I spoke only English, French and a little Italian at the time, and she spoke only German, so it was tough to communicate. Then she got off in Zurich, while I continued on to Munich. I wonder what ever happened to her, and how many grandchildren she might have these days. Ah, the memories of travels gone by.

Have you checked out seat guru.com? If you type in the airline and flight number you'll get the airplane info for that flight along with some basic seat reviews. It will tell you which seats to avoid and why. Also, I think flyertalk.com does reviews as well.

I just checked the stats for the Alitalia A330-200 which serves BOS-FCO. There is no business class, only Classica, Classica Plus and Magnifica. The pitch in the Classica Plus is 37-38 inches vs. 31-32 inches in the Classica (economy). The width is 19.2 inches vs. 17 inches in the Classica. I don't know if there are other perks that go with it, but it looks like that with Alitalia the Classica Plus is the replacement of the Business class, not just the typical Premium Economy offered by other airlines. Given these circumstances an extra $200 may be justified. But it's up to you whether the extra comfort is worth $200.

I've not flown that class on Alitalia; however my experiences with the quality of service absolutely parallel yours, plus a few other negatives that they threw in as extras. I found the rude staff to be most troublesome, both at the airport and over the telephone as I was trying work out a booking issue and later trying to locate my long-lost bag. It's the only time I've ever actually had a customer service person yell at me. While it is possible I just had a run of bad luck, the experiences were such that I will not fly Alitalia again.

When did you have that problem? That is important because things do change. And then sometimes you just have either good luck or bad.

FWIW, we did Delta EconomyPlus on our last trip to/from Italy (2013) and were glad we had paid extra for the room.

Hi Jane
I have used Classica Plus, and I did enjoy the roomier seats.
The seats are leather and roomier (wider and with more leg room), comes with better pillows and blankets.
The seats are 2 - 3 - 2 across.
There is an entertainment console at each seat with nice headsets.
Upon boarding and through out the flight they offer beverages and snacks. (In Economy you have to walk to the back for them)
Warm towels to freshen up before each meal and a toiletry set which includes lip balm, socks, comb, toothbrush, etc.
And you get to board before Economy class - which was nice.

The meals were the same as in Economy (very disappointing) but you get served first.

Hope this helps.

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful replies. This is very helpful!