Pilots ground Eurovision Song Contest team

THE CYPRUS Eurovision Song Contest team suffered a minor hiccup in their efforts to get to Jerusalem on Sunday night when their flight was delayed after both the original pilot and his stand-by replacement reported they were too sick to fly.

The team, including singer Marlain and her backing vocalists, was scheduled to fly out on a Cyprus Airways flight at 10.30pm. However, pilot Chris Christodoulou, president of breakaway pilots’ union Pasipy, complained of vomiting and said he was unable to fly.

At this point, the airline turned to fellow pilot Andreas Constantinides, former president of Pasipy, who said he was suffering from sunstroke and couldn’t fly either.

As a result, the flight was postponed, finally leaving at 5.30am yesterday morning.

The Eurovision crew weren’t on it, however. They had already left for Tel Aviv at 12.45am – on an El Al flight.

The contest is to be held next Saturday, and preparations for it began in Jerusalem yesterday. Marlain, who has been voted one of the favourites to win, will sing the song Thane Erotas. Last year’s Israeli winner Dana International, who won with her song Diva, scandalised hard-line religious groups in her home country because she is a transsexual and used to be a man.

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.