I am researching airfare to Italy (Sicily, specifically) for September travel and found very reasonable airfare on Meridiana Airline. Round trip direct flight from JFK to Palermo for $608 per person. Sounds too good to be true especially since all other airlines, including Alitalia, Air France, Delta, Klm run roughly $1,200 per person and that's with a stop over in Rome or Milan.
Anyone ever fly this airline?
My post isn't about Meridiana, but may be analogous....
My wife flies to Russia with our daughter about every two years. They are there now.
She had mostly flown via Aeroflot, and on one occasion, a small German airline that had service to Moscow. This year, I went through a bout of unemployment for the first time in my 38 year working life. She had to go to Russia to renew her internal passport, or she may have lost citizenship. Therefore, we were searching for a flight that could fit within out limited budget at the time.
She found a new independent Russian airline with service from LAX to Moscow. Because they were an upstart, they were substantially underselling Aeroflot. With a 5 week lead time, we found RT tickets for about $2K for both of them, when comparable Aeroflot flights were $3K+. She was worried that she had never heard of the airline. Nevertheless, we booked, because we couldn't afford the extra $1K.
Her flight to Moscow went very well, just delayed by about 50 minutes. That may be a risk of fledgling airlines, with the reward being lower fares.
I just looked at Meridiana and it looks like a legit airline to me. I say carefully read any restrictions and surfees, and jump in! Put it on your AmEx so you have some redress if things get ugly.
