I recently took a return flight with Yemenia Airways from Frankfurt to Asmara Eritrea. Unfortunately I was not the one who booked the flight so had little choice in the airline. Flying out from Frankfurt to Asmara was an absolute nightmare, the flight was very late in taking off, the flight attendants (without exception were extremely rude and in some cases aggressive) when dealing with passengers and my seat was faulty in that it would not stay in the upright position. However what was most bizarre was the fact that after taking off from Frankfurt we landed about 1.5 hours later in Rome where more passengers were picked up. This stop was not highlighted on our Printed ticket, that simply showed that we would leave Frankfurt then stop in Sana'a and then onto Asmara. When we asked the flight attendant about this she firstly did not answer our question and was also quite rude about it. After leaving Rome, 2 hours later we then went on to Sana'a. Once in Sana'a the whole thing descended into utter chaos. We go off the plane and onto a stationary bus on the runway, which was used to give out tickets for the connecting flight, we were then asked to get onto another bus which took us to the connecting flight, there we noticed that despite being given seat numbers, nobody sat in the seats allocated to them, and the flight was further delayed by this. I make several long haul journeys per year, and considered this to have been the worst flying experience that I have ever had, that was until I took the return flight.
The experience on the return flight was even more of an ordeal. Firstly, after all the chaos of checking in at Asmara Airport a number of us were allocated seats with a letter G (14G) on a plane that did not have G in the seating plan. The airhostesses looked irrigated as on the previous flight and they just pointed to the nearest available seat and asked us to sit there, seats which had been allocated to other passengers. We then made the first leg of the journey from Asmara to Sana'a where we were scheduled to make an overnight stop and stay in a Yemenia hotel. The strangest thing ever happened, in the pilot landed the plane without any warning. Usually we are used to announcements being made that the plane is about to land, this never happened. Once in Sana'a the situation descended in to chaos once more as we were led into the passport checking area and spent two hours waiting to be allocated a hotel. The staff they had on had to do this did not seem experienced enough to carry out the task. One of the staff doing spent a great deal of time arguing with passengers saying that they did not possess correct passports, simply because he had never seen that type before. The process descended into further chaos when one of the passport checkers saw that I had a British Passport and decided to place me on the hotel list for the connecting flight to London instead of Frankfurt which was my correct destination, it was only by pure luck that I discovered this oversight. We were finally taken to our hotel (The Almusafir Hotel which is owned by Yemenia Airways). The Journey to the hotel was frightening with a small minibus at Double capacity with people standing up inside. The hotel itself was extremely poor. We would have been perfectly happy with something basic, as long as it was clean. This was not the case with our room. It was not clean at all. The bathroom was disgusting, the bath look as though it had never been cleaned, the flush was broken on the toilet and it appeared as though the room's last occupant had used the only towel instead of toilet paper (which was also missing from the rooms).
The return final leg of the flight from Sana'a to Frankfurt was little better, yet again I was allocated a seat that would not stay in the upright position, however the airhostesses seemed much more friendly which made the flight a little more bearable. I would say that this has to be my worst flight experience ever. I was very disappointed with the standard of service provided and feel that Yemenia needs to look very carefully at the service that it provides.