New Alitalia flights - LAX to Rome, nonstop at last

Starting June 1, you will be able to fly nonstop from LAX to Rome. The Alitalia Airlines flights, five days a week, will be the only nonstop service between California and Rome, LAX officials said. The service marks the return of the Italian airline to Los Angeles after seven years, they added; it used to fly Los Angeles-Milan.

The flights: One round trip every day of the week except Thursday and Friday between LAX and Rome’s Fiumicino airport (FCO). The plane will be a two-class Boeing 777-200 with 249 seats in economy and 42 in business. From Rome, you can connect to Italian cities such as Florence, Milan and Venice, plus worldwide cities such as Athens, Cairo and Tel Aviv.

The fares: So far, about the same as other airlines charge for transatlantic nonstop flights. That means more than $1,000 for a round trip during summer. For instance, checking June 12-19 round trips on Alitalia’s website Thursday, I found fares starting at $1,295 for LAX-Rome. These are special fares that the airline says must be booked by March 4 for travel June 1 to June 30.  For July 15-22, round trips were starting at nearly $1,500.
The future: Watch this space. Major airlines are adding international flights like crazy to take advantage of “open skies” agreements and higher fares. (Think: Southwest doesn’t fly to Rome.) At LAX, Air France, British Airways, Air China, EVA Air and United Airlines are among carriers that have recently added or announced new foreign flights.

— Jane Engle, Assistant Los Angeles Times Travel Editor

[Image: alitalia.com]

Permalink | E-mail | Print | Add to My Trips

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 9:00 am by Jane Engle and is filed under Business Travel, Europe, Frequent Flier, Italy, Los Angeles, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.