Hello all. First, I'd like to say that I'm sorry for those of you who commented my last report (AV248 flight) and I did not answered. It was a lack of attention from my part.
So here we go!
This flight report is about flight ALITALIA 675 from São Paulo, Brazil to Rome, Italy. That's the first of 5 flights I made last July, but that's the only one I'm going to report, 'cause I did not took pictures of other flights. If anyone of you is interested, I flew GRU-FCO-BRI-FCO-FLR and then FCO-GRU as the Florenca to Rome leg was made by train! The reason to go to Bari (BRI) was to take a cruise ship, MSC Fantasia around Greek Islands, Venice and Dubrovnik.
So, around 11:30AM I left my home at São Paulo to Guarulhos Airport (GRU/SBGR) via cab. As Guarulhos is very far (it is not exactly at São Paulo city but at Guarulhos City), the ride took us about 45 minutes.
Check-in took 30 minutes, what is not bad considering 777's size. After going through security, I walked into terminal 1 to wait for our plane! Few minutes later, that's what I spot!
YES! I am flying SKYTEAM livery today! Very nice.
FA is calling home a minute before crew board the plane.
Now onboard (sorry for the photo effect, i accidentally switched the camera knob to EFFECTS). You might see that IFE is older generation, still is AVOD (on-demand).
Take a look at the SeatGuru map for Alitalia 772. My seat is 26L. About the seat, I know it has been retrofitted a few years ago and i must say it is not that uncomfortable.
Parked next to AFR 777-300ER.
We pushed back, and the engines GE90-94B made a beautiful well-known noise that excites any aviation geek!
I recommend you to watch the takeoff video (sorry it was unfocused, and please subscribe if you want, hehe) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch'v=cIikCNXMfP8&list=UUkUjKz2AwWAPOJe4ZHoh6kg
Here we go!
You can see the path: we took off from Guarulhos 09L and flew until CXI VOR (which is over Rio de Janeiro) and then a small turn to the left to fly bound to VTR VOR (Vitória City).
Pitch, but consider the IFE BOX below and I am not very tall: only 172 centimeters.
As we started our long cross over Atlantic Ocean, the meal service started. Options were pasta and meat and you might say I asked for the meat. It wasn't that bad but not as a home-made meal. My biggest problem about plane food is the size: it is too small! For a flight of 11 hours, being satisfied with that portion is hard. But you get what you paid for. What can I say..
Starting our Atlantic crossing!
Sun starts to set. Simply gorgeous.
INFORMAZIONI SUL VOLO. 6543 km left!
I will use this photo to talk about the IFE. It had a great collection of movies, not like Emirates, but about 50 films were available and the selection was pretty good. Some of the movies were kind of recent, like the Secret Life of Walter Mitty (not sure if title is correct). The main problem for me is the image quality: not because it doesn't look as good as a new LED TV, but because the image looked like black, it was very hard to see (even with brightness maxed out) but I might guess my IFE was bugged. I honestly did not looked for musics, I am not interested in that at all as long as I have my spotify ready! hehe. So, you can see in that picture HOMELAND dvd playing out at my laptop!
Some info…
Thats Carrie, hahaha.
About the flight crew, they made their job. Some smiling, some not, I'd have to say that I experienced more attentive FA's at American Airlines then at Alitalia. At least all of them could speak english!
Now in Portuguese
Over Africa. We entered Africa Continent via DAKAR.
Sun starts to rise just before we fly over Sardinia.
The seat control.
Over Sardinia.
Loose screw!!
EI-DDH + Lots of effects haha
Pitch again.
24.000 feet! Yeah! Descent to Rome FCO.
Getting ready to meet one of the greatest city on earth!
Roma
FMC message: Drag Required
Almost there!
Please, watch the landing video at Rome RWY 16L here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch'v=UtOa8KFdKso&list=UUkUjKz2AwWAPOJe4ZHoh6kg
Engines shutdown! Welcome to Rome
Delta A333 arriving from Atlanta - helped to make immigration a lot more crowded.
And here it comes the end of my first leg of the trip. I stayed one night at Rome and then left to Bari to take cruise ship, as said before.
Please if you have any question or any critic, comment below :)
Good day folks
AZ used to have better meals and from previous reports the main dish used to come with a pasta dish also. Now their meals in Y just look average. Too bad you didn't take a picture of your breakfast.
Thanks for sharing.
Forgot about the breakfast pic... I think that's the way industry goes: always getting worse (do not include Emirates, Etihad and Qatar on that)! Thanks for commenting!
It seems you had a pleasant flight. My trick to reduce the possibility of a disappointing meal on the air is to request one of the advanced ordered specialty meals. Those have to comply with a mandatory caloric content ensuring decent portions.
Not too often one reads an opinion of AA having superior cabin service. However, most AA crews serving flights to South America are Chilean or Brazilian, without the union salaries or job protections provided to US based crews. That may give them an incentive to be extra attentive and avoid the line of fire.
Hope you had a memorable cruise!
I might say I considered asking for kasher food, as I am a Jew, but not religious outside home. Looking at Alitalia's special meal, all I could see was vegetarian, kasher, muslim and hindu. I am not very familiar with them excluding kasher, so I decided to eat main food. Maybe next time I can see for special meal (i am taking flight THY16 to Instanbul in January from GRU)!
AA's FA are average but since I started flying with them until the last one I made (2007->2013), I can affirm that their service increased a lot!
Thanks for commenting!
Thanks for this FR.
Decent service on AZ but I share your opinion on the crew, they get the job done without too much friendliness.
Too bad we cannot see the breakfast that was offered.
Were there any snacks available during the flight?
Nice to have flown on the Skyteam Livery aircraft!
I forgot about that breakfast pic! :(
About snacks, not at all... I went to galley twice and there was nothing but some water & pepsi's (and some fa's talking.
Flying on skyteam was a very welcomed surprise :)
Thanks for commenting!
Thanks for sharing this interesting and detailed report. Did the 3-4-3 configuration feel tight to you? I find that configuration to be unbearable, but that's just my personal opinion...3-3-3 is much more humane. Everything else seems pretty decent. Just so you know you can inbed you tube videos in your report by putting the url between [youtube] [/youtube] tags.
Hey! Yes, it felt tight to me. Nothing impossible to support but of course very annoying sometimes. I've never tried 3-3-3 configuration, only 3-4-3 and 2-5-2 (10 vs 9 abreast) and of course, it is clearly on 2-5-2 that the seat is wider.
For me, the most bothering thing is to jump not 1, but 2 persons when seating in 3-3-3 or 3-4-3 compared to 2-5-2!
About youtube, I originally uploaded the report with that [youtube] [/youtube] thing but the error message appeared. Might be trying to fix it later!
Thanks for commenting!
Ouch, that is one nasty IFE box...