Richard Yeomans

The alarm went off at 3:30 and soon after I was in the car heading to Heathrow.  About 10 minutes after leaving the road was closed for tree cutting at 4 o’clock in the morning.  The tree cutters were stealth woodmen as there was no one in sight.  The diversion cost me about 20 minutes and that would mean I would have to rush to catch my airline.

The airline took me to Frankfurt then I had to catch a connecting flight to Kiev.  As I wandered through Frankfurt airport I was struck by the vast array of emotions; I saw people crying with joy of being reunited and others with tears of sadness.  For me, airports are now empty places full of people.  I think the excitement of air travel has gone.

When I arrived in Kiev the airport was totally packed, there was a flight just arriving from New York.  Every time I fly into Kiev there always seems to be a Delta Airlines plane parked up!  Is there really such a big market to connect the two cities?

As soon as we were at our plane we went through our pre-flight routine, loading catering and fuel for the flight to Jeddah.  I had just completed my duties and was going to sit down with a cup of tea when the bags arrived closely followed by the passengers.  Before too long we were on our way and the flight attendant was very busy with the 8 passengers.  We too were busy planning our route across airspace I am less familiar with.  I always take my time and mark the route on a chart, check the frequencies and border crossing points.  I don’t want to get into trouble in the Middle East.

We had a pretty uneventful flight and we had time to enjoy a meal as we watched the sun set over the desert.  An hour before we landed we had to lock up  all the alcohol and this was inspected by customs on landing.   The flight attendant had to find the abaya (a big black dressing gown) and put it on.  I must admit I found it hard to not smile.  Once the plane was packed up we sat around waiting for our visa to be processed, this took about 45 minutes. 

We were driven to the hotel and I before long I was at the check in desk.  The hotel was in total chaos and people were shouting and getting cross with the receptionist.  It soon became apparent that the hotel was full and they had no intention of giving us rooms for the night.  I called our travel department and they had a valid booking reference number.  The Hotel had just over sold the rooms and there were no rooms for us.  They managed to get 3 rooms at a pretty poor hotel just down the road and I jumped at the chance of a bed for the night.