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This report is about my flights to Cyprus in the summer of 2004 which I still regard as one of my best flying experiences ever!
It all started saturday 10 july when we took the bus at 9 to take us too Antwerp Berchem station where we would take the thalys at 10 that would take us to Schiphol.
When we boarded the Thalys the first problems began, someone was sitting on our seats, luckily they moved after one of my bad looks. When we arrived in Schiphol 2 hours later we went to check-in desks of KLM in Departures 2 to check in for our flight to Larnaca.
We had to queue there for an hour since there are only 20 check-in desks for all KLM economy flights and (imagine the queue) on this top-day only 4 of them where opened. After we finally checked in and received our boarding passes we went to the Passport and security point where we had to queue for another half hour. We where lucky that our flight was delayed for 45 minutes due to weight and balance problems or we would have missed it... Since our gate was D28 at the end of the D-pier we had no time for shopping and spotting.
When we boarded the Cyprus airways A320-200 5B-DAU with some KLM stickers we sat down in the back at our seats 26A,B and 27A,B.
The pilot wanted to get in the air asap because of the delay so he applied full-power when he wasn't finished line-up. After we waggled down the runway we made a sharp left turn and climbed to 33000 feet.
We received some peanuts with a drink while the 5 FA's of wich one spoke dutch prepared our Hot-lunch. We could choose between, Fish, Meat and Pasta. Me and my sis took meat wich was extremely good with some nice mushrooms and carrots but some too dry potatoes, my parents took the fish option with rice. besides that there was a corn bun, some dry crackers, a piece of gouda cheese and a typically cypriotic cookie. after 3h we started our spectacular approach to Larnaca. You overfly the airport and make a U turn above the sea to land because they have to avoid Turkish cypriotic airspace. You could see the manoeuver very good from the makenzy beach in Larnaca (it's just at the end of the runway)
When you arrive the airport looks like an upgraded hangar but the departures look way better, besides next year they will build a new terminal.
From the place I stayed (Helios crew stayed there too) i could see, hear and smell the airport so I found a pity to leave after 2 weeks on the 24th. we left the hotel at 7:00 and arrived at the airport at 7:05. We went to the AMS check-in desk where checking in went a lot faster even though the check-in lady was still asleep. at 8:30 we started boarding and where bussed to A320 5B-DAW where we had seats 19D,C,E,F.
This time we had again the dutch Fa and 4 colleagues. After a normal takeoff we where served a very delicous hot English breakfast including eggs, bacon, tomato and potatoes.we had some orange juice on the plate and you could get some coffee or thea. when we passed Greece we entered a turbulent zone wich lasted till the dutch border, so a nice IFE :mrgreen: About an hour before landing we where served a cake with a drink. when we started our descend I could clearly see flevoland and Markerwaard pass beneath us and when on final I could see a UA bird on final at the Polderbaan too (it landed parallel with us) this time we arrived at gate D26. we had 5 hours time to do some spotting since our connecting Thalys to Antwerp didn't go earlier.
When we boarded the Thalys it seemed that KLM had overbooked the seats so we had to sit somewhere else than our assigned seats and move to another place at every stop, not a nice experience I was happy when we arrived in Antwerp...
I can conclude that CY is an excellent company maybe even one of the best in Europe and I can recommend them to everyone, CY is certainly the best way to fly to the wonderful island of Cyprus. BUT avoid KLM since they don't know how to organise a proper check-in system and assign non-assigned seats, I never fly them again.
It all started saturday 10 july when we took the bus at 9 to take us too Antwerp Berchem station where we would take the thalys at 10 that would take us to Schiphol.
When we boarded the Thalys the first problems began, someone was sitting on our seats, luckily they moved after one of my bad looks. When we arrived in Schiphol 2 hours later we went to check-in desks of KLM in Departures 2 to check in for our flight to Larnaca.
We had to queue there for an hour since there are only 20 check-in desks for all KLM economy flights and (imagine the queue) on this top-day only 4 of them where opened. After we finally checked in and received our boarding passes we went to the Passport and security point where we had to queue for another half hour. We where lucky that our flight was delayed for 45 minutes due to weight and balance problems or we would have missed it... Since our gate was D28 at the end of the D-pier we had no time for shopping and spotting.
When we boarded the Cyprus airways A320-200 5B-DAU with some KLM stickers we sat down in the back at our seats 26A,B and 27A,B.
The pilot wanted to get in the air asap because of the delay so he applied full-power when he wasn't finished line-up. After we waggled down the runway we made a sharp left turn and climbed to 33000 feet.
We received some peanuts with a drink while the 5 FA's of wich one spoke dutch prepared our Hot-lunch. We could choose between, Fish, Meat and Pasta. Me and my sis took meat wich was extremely good with some nice mushrooms and carrots but some too dry potatoes, my parents took the fish option with rice. besides that there was a corn bun, some dry crackers, a piece of gouda cheese and a typically cypriotic cookie. after 3h we started our spectacular approach to Larnaca. You overfly the airport and make a U turn above the sea to land because they have to avoid Turkish cypriotic airspace. You could see the manoeuver very good from the makenzy beach in Larnaca (it's just at the end of the runway)
When you arrive the airport looks like an upgraded hangar but the departures look way better, besides next year they will build a new terminal.
From the place I stayed (Helios crew stayed there too) i could see, hear and smell the airport so I found a pity to leave after 2 weeks on the 24th. we left the hotel at 7:00 and arrived at the airport at 7:05. We went to the AMS check-in desk where checking in went a lot faster even though the check-in lady was still asleep. at 8:30 we started boarding and where bussed to A320 5B-DAW where we had seats 19D,C,E,F.
This time we had again the dutch Fa and 4 colleagues. After a normal takeoff we where served a very delicous hot English breakfast including eggs, bacon, tomato and potatoes.we had some orange juice on the plate and you could get some coffee or thea. when we passed Greece we entered a turbulent zone wich lasted till the dutch border, so a nice IFE :mrgreen: About an hour before landing we where served a cake with a drink. when we started our descend I could clearly see flevoland and Markerwaard pass beneath us and when on final I could see a UA bird on final at the Polderbaan too (it landed parallel with us) this time we arrived at gate D26. we had 5 hours time to do some spotting since our connecting Thalys to Antwerp didn't go earlier.
When we boarded the Thalys it seemed that KLM had overbooked the seats so we had to sit somewhere else than our assigned seats and move to another place at every stop, not a nice experience I was happy when we arrived in Antwerp...
I can conclude that CY is an excellent company maybe even one of the best in Europe and I can recommend them to everyone, CY is certainly the best way to fly to the wonderful island of Cyprus. BUT avoid KLM since they don't know how to organise a proper check-in system and assign non-assigned seats, I never fly them again.
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