Review of ITA Airways flight from Rome to Athens in Economy

Welcome to the 4th report of my European adventure! Today, I will be flying the new-ish Italian flag carrier ITA Airways in their A321neo! This will be my first time on an A321neo! Originally, the flight was scheduled to be on one of their short-haul intra-European A320neos, but it was changed about 2 weeks prior to departure to their medium-haul A321neo with seatback IFE!

FCO Airport

Welcome to Rome's main airport, FCO, the home of ITA Airways!

Let's check in!

Security at FCO was comparable to PreCheck in the US in that you don't need to remove electronics and liquids from your bag, and you don't need to take off your shoes. The security line was also short. As common with many European airports (like FRA, BER, and ATH), you must go through duty-free in order to head to the gate. As I always say, I hate airports that do this.

After that, let's head to the gate!

Some sad retired Alitalia birds, including 777s, a jungle jet, an A321-200, and a few more, just sitting unused in the Italian sun.

Here's the gate, A68. I really like the gate info displays! Even showing a picture of the Acropolis!

Here's the A321neo taking me to Athens today: EI-HXB, a 0.7 year old (at the time of flight) A321-271NX delivered new to ITA on December 15, 2023, named "Edoardo Mangiarotti". While this plane didn't have any special markings at the time, it currently has an "inspired by Alitalia" sticker near the rear of the fuselage.

Boarding

Let's board this Neo!

Onboard

The business class cabin of ITA's A321neo features 12 Stelia Opera seats in a 1-1 configuration.

The premium economy cabin features 12 Safran Z600 seats in a 2-2 configuration.

The economy cabin, where I will be seated today, features 141 Safran Z400 seats in the standard A320 series 3-3 configuration. I will be seated in aisle seat 48C.

The new Airbus A320neo series Airspace cabin features larger overhead bins, allowing sideways carry-on storage.

The seatback pocket features a beaten-up safety card and an air-sickness bag. However, my seat also had a half-eaten candy inside (not pictured) that was overlooked by cleaning.

ITA's A321neos feature the Safran Rave IFE system, with the screens in economy being among the best in the industry, with 13.3" 4K displays! This is about as good as it gets in any economy cabin! There's also two USB ports, one Type-A, the other being Type-C.

The safety video is screened, but the screens on many of the seats on the left side froze up, my screen included. Just about all of them stayed frozen on that for the rest of the flight.

In-flight

No proper departure photos, but here's a photo of the cabin right after takeoff.

In-flight entertainment system

I've already mentioned the hardware before, but it's currently frozen. Thankfully, I know electronics well. I saw what looked like a reset switch and pressed and held it until the screen rebooted. It's actually an unlabeled power button. If you encounter a frozen screen on any Safran Rave system without an obvious power button, try this method. Unfortunately, most people with frozen screens didn't try this. I reset my entire row with this method.

This screen is so reflective.

Anyways, let's explore the IFE! The screen is very responsive, and as I said earlier, it's a 4K screen in economy!

Sadly, the map wasn't available. A map like Flightpath3D would look great on this screen!

Let's look at the movies!

The selection of movies is pretty good!

There are 4 ways you can display the selection.

While the map didn't work, at least you could get basic info about the flight.

In-flight (Continued)

The lavatory was very narrow, and it wasn't the cleanest..

Now, for the service. I went with a coffee and some chocolate wafer thing. It was very good!

Arrival

20 minutes to go, and descent has started.

Some views of Greece.

The IFE clock is a few minutes off.

Welcome to Athens!

One last look of the economy cabin.

And of the business cabin.

And with that, I'm now in the terminal, ready to go to my hotel! I hope you enjoyed this report!

And, let me get my bag!