Well, sort of I guess? Flying from Catania to anywhere doesn't yield a lot of choices despite it being an "International" airport so we flew on easyJet "a British multinational low-cost airline group that operates domestic and international scheduled services on 927 routes in more than 34 countries" to and from Paris for the Olympic Games.
They're far from a favorite but sometimes you just have to bite-the-bullet as they say. So we did, with nothing to complain about getting to Paris.
Getting back to Catania proved to be more of a challenge. Just as we're getting close to Sicily the captain comes on the PA system to tell us landing will be delayed due to weather issues. A flight we were on years ago was diverted to the nearby military airport due to an eruption on Etna so we didn't think much about it.
UNTIL they came back on the PA and said we were instead landing in Palermo! Yep, the other side of the island from Catania. The implication was that we'd then fly back to Catania when the weather cleared but Zio Lorenzo never thought that was gonna happen. The outgoing flight from there with this plane would simply be cancelled and chaos would ensue until planes and crews were repositioned and normal schedules resumed.
After sitting on the ground in the plane for half-an-hour Heather got a message from the easyJet "app" confirming what we thought, basically "You're on your own in Palermo, sorry." But they implied reasonable expense getting to Catania would be reimbursed.
So we started checking for rental cars...none were available. Hotels seemed booked-up too, probably because ours wasn't the only flight diverted and it's the middle of vacation season in Italy? Once inside the airport we made a dash to SicilybyCar first, scoring one of the last cars they had that could be dropped-off in Siracusa, a gas-guzzling SUV with automatic transmission and leather seats.
So at least the almost 300 kilometers/3 hours to get home would be comfortable, though of course we were already out-of-pocket for the $100 taxi ride home from Catania, but at this point we just wanted to get home!
$50 refilled the tank on the outskirts of Siracusa and we eventually found a place to park the thing and walk the rest of the way home, stopping for a pizza at our favorite place. Showered and in-bed before midnight!
Will easyJet reimburse ANY of this? We've since received more communications describing how they WON'T pay for rental cars or taxi service - I guess they expected us to sit for 4+ hours in a bus or train to Catania? I'd point out if time wasn't important we could have taken a train to/from Paris in the first place. We bought airplane tickets to save that time but now it's just fine to sit for hours on a bus or train?
We sent them receipts anyway but are not holding our breath, though we'll have to bite our tongues sooner rather than later and fly this airline again in the future (as much as we'd rather not) since there's not much choice. We'll hope the weather cooperates in the future so we don't end up "on our own" in Palermo again.
Kind of makes Zio's snarky "sleazyJet" moniker not so snarky?
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