Saturday, March 1, 2008

Our nightmare flight to Cyprus via Istanbul

We were looking forward to getting home after our stay in England. Our British Airways flight departed on time from Manchester at 2.20pm and it all seemed to be a comfortable flight until an hour before we were due to land in Paphos.

You could tell from looking down the aisle that we had suddenly begun to descend quite steeply. I looked at my watch and could see that if we were going to land we were an hour early which would be impossible as it is a minimum of a 4 hour flight from the UK even with extremely good tail winds.

The captain came over the tannoy system and asked for a senior member of the cabin crew to go to the cockpit urgently and I started to panic a bit then. I don’t mind flying once we are up there but I hate take off and landing and the fact that we seemed to be getting ready to land made me worry that we were going to crash. It wasn’t helped by the woman in front of me having a full blown panic attack as the stewardess announced that we had to put on our seatbelts as we would shortly be landing and we all knew that we were no where near Cyprus.

One of the stewardesses was trying to tell the lady in front that we were landing in Cyprus and that the tail winds had helped speed our journey which we knew was not true and whilst she was trying to reassure the lady in front of me it came over the tannoy that the plane was being diverted because of an ‘incapacitated pilot.’

I started to panic a bit more as they then lit the emergency exit signs up over the wing in front of us so I was convinced that we had a mechanical error but they didn’t want to cause panic. It was really hard trying to stay calm as I was sat next to the kids when I felt like panicing and crying. I told Joshua and Ellie to put their things away back in our hand baggage by our feet and tightened their seatbelts.

There was a very tense atmosphere on board and Ellie kept asking if we were going to crash and I was trying to reassure her that everything was ok when inside I felt like crying but couldn’t as I didn’t want to worry the kids.

Vic was brilliant holding my hand and letting me squeeze his hand so tight it was going white as I was really scared. He still has the nail marks I was squeezing his hand so much.

We had a bit of a bumpy landing but were so relieved to be on the ground we all applauded the Captain for landing safely. We didn’t know where we were but were told to wait on the plane for a few minutes as paramedics would be boarding the plane to see to the co-pilot. We were eventually allowed to leave the plane and were put onto buses to be taken into the airport terminal.

It wasn’t until we were in the terminal building we found out we were in Istanbul, Turkey which for going to Cyprus is the worst possible place to land as Cyprus is a divided island after Turkey invaded it and the Greek Cypriots that lived on that side of the island were forced to leave their homes and flee to the other side of the island. As a result you cannot fly from Turkey to Southern Cyprus (Greek side of the island). You can only fly to Ercan in Northern Cyprus (Turkish side) and then you have to get a bus down to Paphos which would be a 3 and a half hour drive at least.

We were left waiting just inside the doors of the terminal building for 2 hours before we were moved into the departure lounge where we were at least able to buy a drink and sit down. (22 euros for 5 cokes – ridiculous!). After a further 2 hours we were told that we would be taken to a hotel for a night but first we had to pass through passport control and to do that we would each need to pay 15 euros for a visa. Everyone made a stand as it was not our choice to be in Turkey and we didn’t want to be there and as it was an emergency that caused us to land there in the first place we should be given exemption of paying this due to our special circumstances.

After another 30 minutes of waiting to hear about the visas they waived the fee and we then had to go through passport control. I asked the man not to stamp our passports as it can cause problems getting into Cyprus if you have a Turkish stamp on your passport but he said he had to (others in a different queue didn’t have theirs stamped).

Eventually we were taken to collect our suitcases and then went out to get in the minibuses that were taking us to a hotel. Me and the kids got on the minibus expecting Vic and his brother to be able to join us once they had put the cases on. The driver started putting other people on and it was full so Josh got upset as he didn’t want to leave his dad behind. Eventually Vic and his brother managed to get in our minibus. We were taken the short ride to the hotel which I have to say was a lovely 4* hotel and maybe in different circumstances I might have been happy to be there but all we really wanted to do was go home.

After checking in we were told that food and drink would be provided in the dining room. It was now 2am and we had landed at 8pm so we were tired but not able to sleep as we still didn’t know when we would be getting home to Cyprus.

We had dinner and then got the kids settled who were absolutely brilliant throughout it all. I got an hour’s sleep but it was hard to rest as by then we had heard the news that the 43 year old co-pilot of our plane had suffered a heart attack and died and that it was his son’s fifth birthday the next day and his kids were the same age as my kids so I couldn’t stop thinking about how awful that was.

We got up the next morning and there were lots of rumours going round about what was going to happen to us. We were told lots of different things including the possibility that we would have to return to the UK or that we would have to land in Ercan in Northern Cyprus and be bussed down to Paphos. Thankfully we were eventually told that a British Airways crew had been flown out and we would be picked up at 11am and our flight would depart at 2.15pm and go to Paphos. We were relieved that we were finally going to Paphos.
So we get to the airport and check in again. One thing that made me very uneasy though was that wherever we went around the airport it seemed as though the Turkish were either staring at Ellie or wanting to touch her arm or her head. It made me very nervous as she is blonde and I didn’t like them touching her and nor did she. I held her hand tightly all round the airport as I was so worried that someone would take her.

We went through to the departure lounge to find that our flight was delayed again. As we were going up the stairs to our plane a photographer was taking pictures of us all going on the plane and saw Ellie and started focusing in on her. It made us very uncomfortable and Ellie didn’t like it so Vic stood infront of her to shield her from it. We eventually left Istanbul at 4pm. We were then told that we would have to land in Rhodes and then turn round and take off again as you cannot fly from Turkey to Cyprus. Fortunately after we had begun our descent to land at Rhodes we were told that the pilot had arranged with Greek airspace so that we now didn’t have to land there.

I have never been so relieved to land in Paphos. I know that it was a medical emergency and we had to land in Istanbul but I do think that we should have been kept better informed of what was happening. No one from British Airways came to speak to us and we were basically dumped in Turkey and the Turkish authorities didn’t want to have to deal with us as we were wanting to go to Paphos. I think that things could have been handled a lot better by BA. I am so pleased to be home now though.

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