INTRODUCTION

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.

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.

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.

THE FLIGHT

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.

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.

UPON ARRIVAL

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...

Pictures of Cyprus Turkish Airlines (kthy)

A beautiful, unspoilt beach in North Cyprus, probably because no-one can get to it!

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.

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!

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.

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!