Cyprus Turkish Airlines (kthy)

...get to the beautiful North Cyprus without incredible amounts of hassle. That is, if you consider 'without incredible amounts of hassle' to be flying with one of the worst scheduled airlines in the world...

Firstly, I would like to state that North Cyprus is one of the most beautiful, unspoilt, non-touristified holiday destinations in the world and I am in no way trying to put people off going here and supporting the mostly wondeful ...
...Turk Hava Yollari - or Cyprus Turkish Airlines in English) in the hope that things may someday change for the better.


BOOKING

Or not. Booking directly with KTHY is a near impossibility. Their website http://www.kthy.net worked for about 6 months in 2003 and has been down ever since. Even then it didn't offer on-line booking. You will be very very lucky yo reach them on the phone. Tour operators such as CTA holidays ... more

INTRODUCTION

As a family we've flown with KTHY every summer for the last 9 years, over which they've gradually been getting worse and worse. As you'll begin to understand from my review, this is not out of choice but of necessity as quite simply its the only way to get to the beautiful North Cyprus without incredible amounts of hassle. That is, if you consider 'without incredible amounts of hassle' to be flying with one of the worst scheduled airlines in the world...

Firstly, I would like to state that North Cyprus is one of the most beautiful, unspoilt, non-touristified holiday destinations in the world and I am in no way trying to put people off going here and supporting the mostly wondeful people who live here and their struggling economy. What I am trying to do is draw attention to the quite simply diabolical state airline, KTHY (Kibris Turk Hava Yollari - or Cyprus Turkish Airlines in English) in the hope that things may someday change for the better.

BOOKING

Or not. Booking directly with KTHY is a near impossibility. Their website http://www.kthy.net worked for about 6 months in 2003 and has been down ever since. Even then it didn't offer on-line booking. You will be very very lucky yo reach them on the phone. Tour operators such as CTA holidays and Anatolian Sun are about the only way to go. These agencies book large numbers of seats on KTHY flights and allocate them to holidaymakers who book package holidays with them. If you want to book flights only, you're probably going to have to go through some sort of agency. And it ain't gonna be cheap. We're looking at a minimum of £300 return for peak season, coming down to about £220 for off season and this is for a flight that is abysmal in comparison to most low-fares airlines.

BEFORE THE FLIGHT

Your tickets should be posted to you by the tour operator in paper form. This leaves a fair bit of margin for error as you will most likely have no printed record of having booked them if things go wrong. The e-ticket system used by most airlines now is far superior.

KTHY fly from a variety of UK airports including Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester and Glasgow. Whilst this is convenient, there are usually little more than 2 flights per week so don't expect to be able to pick and choose when you fly. In the past I have flown from Stansted and Manchester, Stansted being the far superior airport, but thats another story.

Arriving at the airport, check-in will be handled by an external operator such as servisair, which is a blessing in disguise as these companies at least have some sort of concept of customer service. When the inevitable delay comes, they may at least be able to offer you some sort of idea what's going on. When you eventually reach the gate, be very very glad if there is some sort of knackered looking plane there - it means you may have a chance of flying sometime soon! But there again there may not be.

KTHY seem to have absolutely no concept of punctuality. They frequently miss departure slots, which in busy airports such as Heathrow and Manchester is a big mistake. We have sat on the taxiway (in 30 or so degree heat) for over 2 hours in the past, just waiting for a take-off slot after the allocated one was missed.

THE FLIGHT

KTHY currently fly Boeing 737-800 and Airbus A310 aircraft. In the past we have also travelled on Boeing 727s and McDonnell Douglas MD90. By far the worst of these aircraft is the MD90, a horrid, horrid plane, noisy, rough, uncomfortable. Thanks goodness they don't fly these any more. Of the 737 and the A310 I'd say the A310 is marginally preferable due to its widebody layout (2-4-2) and very smooth cruising however it is getting very old and it shows. The 737 is a slightly more modern aircraft but is a fair bit more cramped and not as smooth. I'll go more into the fiasco of KTHY's fleet later.

Upon boarding, you'll be greeted by the rather burly cabin crew and shunted towards your allocated seat. Thank goodness smoking has been banned on KTHY flights recently as Turks are notoriously heavy smokers and no matter where your seat you used to be exposed. If you're lucky, your seat may be reasonably clean, with no sick or food debris on it, and you'll be able to place your baggage in the overhead lockers. And that's about it as far as creature comforts are concerned. There may be a motheaten safety card in your seat pocket, and possibly even a copy of the in-flight magazine Caretta Caretta. Your overhead lights and air vents may or may not work depending on your luck and the 'call stewardess' button is esentially just for show.

Seats on the A310 have adequate legroom as this is a reasonably spacious plane. The 737 however is very cramped, being in the 'most seats' configuration with no consideration of comfort. The seats also seem to have a rather uncomfortable metal bar in the lumbar region which makes a comfortable position almost impossible to find.

If you're lucky enough to take off any time soon, then you'll be treated to a very lacklustre 'safety demonstration' from the bored cabin crew and then powering up the runway. At the end of the day, a flight is a flight and this no worse than most in terms of the experience once in the air. You'll be marginally more comfortable in the Airbus I think. Don't expect any kind of 'service' here. You'll get one hot meal (consists of what I can best describe as 'boxed owl') on the long leg of the flight and then a snack (of dry cake) on the short leg. I should explain at this point that airlines are not permitted to fly directly to Northern Cyprus due to the peculiar politics of the place. You must touch down in mainland Turkey for a while, which turns a 4 hour flight into a 7 hour flight, not a good thing when you're forced to stay on the plane throughout.

Cleanliness of the planes leaves a lot to be desired. In fact I doubt they've actually been cleaned since 1980. I've personally discovered dirty nappies under my seat, partially digested bread on the cushions and a variety of delightful sticky stuff all over the place. Toilets are quite frankly unacceptable. On my last A310 flight, 1 out of 6 in flight toilets was operational, and that one was far from pleasant, believe me!

UPON ARRIVAL

You'll arrive (all being well - see below) at the delightfully 70s Ercan Airport. Definitely stuck in the past this airport has you walking across the taxiways etc to reach the terminal where you'll queue for an hour or so to have tour passport scrutinised by the police and then hope to god that your luggage has arrived too. Air con is pretty much non existent and facilities are minimal. But then again you can't really compare this country to more developed areas like Britain so I won't bitch on about this too much.

HORROR STORIES

Of which I have no end. Aside from the ones I've already mentioned (cleanliness, punctuality, comfort etc) there was last year. I suppose you could call it the final straw...

Last year (2003) we boarded our Airbus A310 at Manchester as usual. Aside from the usual wondrous KTHY service (1 of 6 toilets working, hideous food, vile staff, falling apart) the flight was OK. As we began to descend for North Cyprus, the usual garbled announcement came across the tannoy that we were approaching some sort of airport. Slightly worryingly, this sounded nothing like Ercan but I put this down to the poor quality of the tannoy. But no. Coming in for a rough landing, I looked out of the window and saw a rather unfamiliar terminal building sporting the the sign 'Gecitkale'. Not Ercan. Oh dear... It turns out that Ercan was out of action and had been for several months and luckily our car hire people knew to meet us at Gecitkale instead. It would have been nice to know however...

Next came the newspapers. The English language 'Cyprus Today' is an absolutely vital resource in North Cyprus and we were somewhat perturbed to find headlined in the current issue the absolute shambles of KTHY's operations. KTHY started the 2003 season with 7 aircraft. 2x 240 seat Airbus A310s and 5x 180 seat Boeing 737-800s. By the time we arrived, they were down to 6 as one of the 737s was out of action in maintenence. Due to this unexpected downtime, some passengers were left waiting over 24 hours for their flight home, passengers on the other end facing a delay of 26 hours.

In the next issue of Cyprus today we read in horror about the demise of the plane we had just travelled on. On it's next flight from the UK to Cyprus, the A310 we had just been on suffered engine failure over Turkey and was forced to make an emergency landing. Passengers on board were practically abandoned without information or accomodation, and were eventually flown out to North Cyprus 2 nights later (bear in mind some of these people may only have been staying for a week). The airline's second A310 was grounded as a result of this, bringing the fleet down to 4 aircraft.

But no, the airline implosion was not done yet. Shortly afterwards, a baggage handler at Ercan somewhat mistakenly crashed a baggage truck into one of the remaining 737s, esentially writing the aircraft off. Leaving just two airplanes to handle the workload of seven.

Needless to say, horror stories of 3-day long delays and worse began to follow as the airline desperately attempted to clear the backlog. Perhaps the worst element of this situation was that the only information available was that published in Cyprus Today and talking to other delighted KTHY customers. Attempting to contact KTHY by phone and email resulted in nothing. The next article in Cyprus Today told that the airline had succeeded in drafting in an ancient McDonnell Douglas MD-82 aircraft to help fill the gap - however the plane was so decrepit, the CAA would not let it fly with passengers and it remained grounded at Gecitkale awaiting certification.

At the end of the day, we were left with no idea about what was to happen when we attempted to fly home but decided that we would try to enjoy the rest of our holiday and that what would happen on our way back would happen and there was nothing we could do about it. We went to re-confirm our return flights at the KTHY offices in Kyrenia 2 days before our scheduled departure. The office was heaving with angry holidaymakers, all seemingly getting nowhere. We were told that our flight was already delayed by 18 hours, at least we knew now so that we did not show up at the airport far too early. We were also told that the aircraft was a 737, wait a minute, that has some 60 less seats than the Airbus we were booked on? Will there be enough space? Whoops, the info suddenly dries up...

We got in touch with our tour operator, Cyprus Paradise, who seemed equally sick of things. They told us that there had been problems earlier on in the week with planes being too small but this flight did not have more than 180 people booked on it so e should be OK. We arrived at Gecitkale on time, and talked with other panic-stricken holidaymakers whilst we waited for check-in. Although it started a little late, the flight still showed as on time so we remained hopeful. The staff in the airport seemed more interested in the football on telly (think Turkey were playing). Took our seats in departures and watched with little surprise as the delays began to stack on the flight. First 20mins, then 1h, then 1h30, finally it stabilised at around 2 hours and a rather bedraggled 737 staggered into the airport. It was turned around in a matter of minutes and we were soon, finally on our way home. Thank goodness for that! Needless to say, fiascos like this don't exactly fill one with desire to repeat it all, no matter how great the holiday in between the trauma - and just to add insult to injury the baggage systems at Manchester added another hour or so on to our delays!

THE ALTERNATIVES

Very few really. A small Turkish airline named Onur Air occasionally take passengers to N.Cyprus but I can't find any info on them. There's a charter firm named TWI that work with the tour operators that began flying last year but again it's very difficult to find out any info. Your only real alternative to KTHY is flying with Turkish Airlines and changing in Istanbul. We tried this one year, and it's not an experience we're willing to repeat in a hurry.

CONCLUSION

As it is, N.Cyprus is stuck with KTHY. They have a captive audience due to little/no competition and are free to operate in the shambolic way in which they do. If N.Cyprus is ever to become the successful tourist destination it so deserves to be then someone, somewhere is going to have to do something about this diabolical airline. Preferably scrap it, scrap the stupid restrictions on flying direct and get some low-cost airlines flying to Ercan. But then again, this may ruin the rather unspoilt and quiet nature of the place... You decide!

Thanks very much for reading my enormous rant, Tom. 

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