Plane delayed for 18 hours in Moscow

AFTER an 18-hour delay, passengers of a Cyprus Airways flight finally arrived from Moscow back in Larnaca on Sunday.

The aircraft had been scheduled for the 3.20pm flight from Moscow on Saturday, but while captain of the Airbus A320 was conducting cockpit checks, he noticed on his computer that there might be a technical fault.
Take-off proceedings were immediately abandoned and the passengers, who hadn’t yet boarded the plane, remained in the airport lounges.

Russian technicians examined the plane and concluded that there wasn’t really a problem, but the captain refused to fly the plane unless the fault was sorted.

After hours of waiting, the passengers were transferred to a hotel in the Russian capital at midnight.

When asked about the fault, CY spokesman Tasos Angelis said that the only reason the flight was delayed for so long was because equipment needed to be brought over from Cyprus. “It’s a difficult airport. We couldn’t get the proper equipment.”

Talking of the captain’s decision not to fly the plane, Angelis said: “The point is, the captain saw something he didn’t like and decided not to fly, something he is well within his right to do.”

As for the passengers’ discomfort, Angelis simply said: “Would they rather have boarded a faulty plane?”

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.