Christmas is in the air(ports)

In December 2013, I had a fun misadventure trying to fly to Italy in a VIP-laden flight. My Facebook updates kept my friends entertained for 24 hours. Here’s the full timeline.

Giuseppe Sollazzo

5 min readDec 25, 2018

The day starts normally.

But things begin to look wrong not long after.

They start to move passengers from gate to gate.

A delay is announced, but…

…then we are asked to go out.

However, we have VIP passengers (who are being treated like everybody else):

Antonio Caprarica is a famous Italian journalist, at the time of this story he has just left his role as main London correspondent for RAI. Here I highlight the egalitarian nature of Alitalia at being utterly terrible.

The other VIP on board is Marc Innaro, at the time RAI correspondent in Cairo, and therefore well trained in warlike situations.

Some absurdity is announced while we are waiting to pick up our luggage.

We all start saying: “Why don’t you get us on a coach to Stansted? It will be hard to get a take-off spot from Heathrow”. They decline. (Keep this in mind for the plot twist later on…)

Meanwhile, some other absurdities. This one:

And this one:

3 hours into this, Alitalia provides us with £5 for a snack. Lucky Business Class passengers receive a very generous £10.

Meanwhile, I do enquiries through the magic world of social media and friends who work in airlines, and keep my fellow passengers informed. Mr Caprarica looks at me straight in the eyes and remarks:

which roughly translates as: “You, Sir, have the typical middle-eastern beard of someone who’s in the know”.

Mrs Innaro laughs at this and replies: “Your beard would be incredibly popular in Tahir Square!”

Dispatches from Alitalia are still being optimistic about our ability to reach Rome, while announcing delay after delay. I have already missed my connection for Bari at 8pm… but I’m still welcoming news about being able to make the first leg.

We sit 40 minutes in an A319 shaken by the strong winds.

My sense of humour keeps reassuring my friends and family.

With all these journos around, I start behaving as a paparazzo.

Both journalists were travelling economy class. The only business class passenger I engaged with was an attaché to the Italian Embassy in Washington travelling on a diplomatic passport, whose connection from New York to London had been cancelled the day before. Twice lucky.

The captain is giving all his best. The wind blows 5 km/h beyond the safety limit. Grrr.

Some proper spooky moments:

Finally, the obvious and unavoidable.

The correlation is not between clapping and landing, then. It is between clapping and disembarking.

The poor girl from Alitalia trying to help us is actually not even an Alitalia employee. She works for Tarom, the Romanian airline, who are Alitalia partners. She is at the phone with Rome for a long time receiving instructions, as no Alitalia support is left in London by this time.

Hotels at big airports are generally creepy places worth of The Shining. Thousands of rooms, never ending corridors, silence.

I don’t have a proper camera with me, sadly.

We’made it to day 2. And guess what?

Alitalia get us on a coach, school trip style. At this stage, we feel like we’ve known each other for a long time and are all socialising, VIPs and non-VIPs alike. Some people suggest we should start singing school trip classics (like Azzurro).