Read this first if you have complaints about Malaysian Airlines, Air Asia or Fire Fly, you will feel better and glad that they outshine this particular airlines from a so called Western developed nation - edit.

I had no idea, though, that I had purchased my ticket from the worst airline company in the world – Italy’s national carrier Alitalia – and that a two-hour layover in Rome would turn into an ordeal that lasted longer than a week. I placed my most critical and expensive items in my carry-on bag so they wouldn’t get damaged or lost. Yet the woman at the Alitalia check-in counter in Beirut’s international airport said my bag was too large and would have to be checked. I wasn’t happy about that, but I did as I was told and surrendered my luggage. She neglected to tell me that Alitalia’s baggage handlers were on strike and that it would be a very long time before I would see my property again – if I ever would see it again.

An American woman approached the manager in tears and told him her son had just died and that she needed to get to Chicago for his funeral. Would he please just rebook her on another airline?

“No,” he said.

And then the crowd lost it.

Five enormous black men stormed up to the manager while punching their hands with their fists. “Motherfucker!” one of them said and flared his eyes and his nostrils. I thought for sure we were about to see blood on the floor. The black man was hyperventilating and literally shaking while he tried with all his might to restrain himself from committing violence. A few passengers stepped between him and the manager. None of us wanted a riot. But a riot felt imminent.

“Do you know what’s going on with these Africans?” a woman said to me. “They’ve been here for four days, and now the airline is saying there's no record they ever booked a flight at all.”

“We want to go home!” the five Africans yelled in unison. Four days they had been waiting! Read the whole piece here by Michael Totten