After ex-foreign minister is flown to Amsterdam, not Athens

Brits end up in Cologne instead of Saudi Arabia

By Charlie Charalambous
TWO BRITISH businessmen were yesterday given the same VIP treatment as ex- foreign minister Alecos Michaelides… sent a thousand miles in the wrong direction, courtesy of Cyprus Airways.

On Monday, bungling Cyprus Airways officials flew Michaelides to Amsterdam, instead of Athens. Now, the national carrier has completed a rare double whammy at Larnaca airport inside a week.

A catalogue of errors and a computer error saw two British businessmen destined for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, bussed across the runway to a Eurocypria plane bound for Cologne – a different continent altogether.

Although the airline has tried to keep a lid on the high-profile mistakes – the latest episode happened on Thursday morning – the unwanted publicity has caused a sudden loss of face at head office. “It’s all very embarrassing,” is all that one company source could tell the Cyprus Mail yesterday.

An insider at Larnaca airport told the Mail: “Before Michaelides we never had this problem, now we’ve had two incidents in a week.” The source added: “A lot of mistakes have to be made before a passenger ends up on the wrong aircraft, it’s not that simple.”

On Thursday morning, the two British businessmen, whose names have not been made public, checked in for the 8.30am Cyprus Airways flight to Riyadh. At the same time, a Eurocypria flight was due to leave for Germany.

However, the Cyprus Airways captain refused to take off when a body count on board revealed that two passengers were missing. There was a long delay as the captain demanded that their luggage be unloaded as a security precaution.

The suitcases belonging to the businessmen were found on board – but it was too late to stop the Cologne flight carrying the missing passengers.

It is understood that the outraged Brits were eligible for the airline’s frequent flyer scheme, taking into account the long haul back.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.