At the height of the holiday season, a strike has hit passengers of the Italian airline Alitalia.<br /><br /> The 24-hour stoppage has forced the company to cancel many flights.<br /><br /> The company says about 15 percent of flights were grounded.<br /><br /> The disruption comes at the start of one of Italy’s busiest holiday weekends of the year.<br /><br /> One man at Rome’s Fiumicino airport<br />said: “Unfortunately we had our flight cancelled. Now we have to find where to stay tonight, because our next available flight is tomorrow morning.”<br /><br /> Another man said: “We’ll just have to wait and see if there’s another available flight. They’re spoiling my holidays, and since I have just one week off, that’s not nice.”<br /><br /> Pilots and flight attendants are on strike across the country in a row over pay and conditions.<br /><br /> The level of staffing is one of the sticking points.<br /><br /> The airline strike comes after weeks of industrial action on the Rome metro system.
