Flight check: Venice to Rome on Alitalia

Alitalia Airbus A319. Photo / Supplied

Aaron Hailwood flies Italy's national carrier Alitalia, AZ1480 from Venice to Rome.

The plane: A rather old and tired Airbus A319.

Class: Economy - no business class offered.

My seat: 1D. I paid a couple of euros to get the front seat and the extra legroom was great, but probably unnecessary on an hour-long flight. My seat was permanently in the recline position, which made me feel like such a rebel during take-off and landing. However, as the flight attendants didn't tell me to raise it, they clearly knew it was broken.

Price: $60 - pretty good for a full-service airline flying between the cities' main airports, Marco Polo and Fiumicino.

Fellow passengers: A mixture of tourists and business people aboard a pretty full flight.

On time: The flight - which is scheduled for 1hr - took off about five minutes late, but we landed five minutes early before a hideously long process of transferring everyone onto one bus for a long drive, which meant arriving at the terminal 15 minutes late. Then the bags took more than 25 minutes to appear.

Entertainment: Nothing but an in-flight magazine half in Italian and half in English.

The service: Excellent cabin crew: friendly and perfectly groomed. Announcements in Italian and perfect English. Terrible ground staff who didn't seem to know how to get the plane boarded.

Food and drink: A choice of water, Pepsi, juice or wine, as well as crackers. Perfect for a short flight.

The toilets: Clean but, like the rest of the plane, in need of a spruce-up.

Luggage: 20kg, although I took on 25kg without any issues.

The airport experience: Marco Polo Airport was great with very fancy shops, easy check-in process, but a hideously inefficient boarding process. Fiumicino was a fiasco, with baggage taking forever and taxi scalps telling you the signs saying €48 fixed price to town didn't apply (they do - just walk to the taxi rank).

Would I fly this again: Yes, good price, and some of the best cabin crew I've ever experienced. Only the ancient plane let it down.