Flying from Olu Deniz....

[AlastairW]

As some of you may know, I have spent the last weekend in Olu Deniz.....

Of which more later.....

But a little tale of the journey home first.

Had my final flight yesterday morning, having got a truck up the mountain at 7am.... landed about 9:30, then packed up, back to the hotel to jump on the transfer to Dalaman.

Arrived at the airport at about 12:50.... 90 mins until flight, and pushed through the usual scrum of people queueing to check in, anticipating long queues.

None....

No one queueing. No one even sat at the three desks for the Newcastle flight.....

Go and pester someone, and eventually they check me in, after arguing about my bag being 2kg overweight.

Through to departures, where I sat and had a beer. Saw the plane pull up, and waited for the flight to be called. I admit I may have stayed a few minutes longer, but thought I had ages to go to get on the flight.

Wander down to the gate.

No one there.

None..... except the officious girl from check in who tried to charge excess.

Christ I am late. They have all boarded, and I am last on, so I hurry to the xray machine. Never ever before have I had my bag searched, but of course this time Mr officious wants me to empty my bag, switch gps and vario on etc etc etc.

I had visions of the plane leaving and me being stranded in Turkey.

Eventually he is satisfied, I stuff everything into the bag and run to the walkway onto the plane.

"SIT DOWN" the guy on the Xray machine shouts.

Visions of midnight express pass before my eyes, imagining at any moment armed Turkish police are going to turn up and escort me of to Prison.

Instead a guy in a white Shirt wanders over to me and holds out his hand for me to shake. "Good afternoon Mr Wolf, and welcome to your flight"

????? Never had this happen before.......

"I am your Captain. You realise you are our only passenger??"

at that point everything falls into place.... no queues cos I am the only person!

Escorted by the captain onto the plane, to be greeted by my 8 cabin crew members, who are there to serve me.

Given a bottle of wine as I sat down, how many meals would I like? (they had 40 on board...) what film would I like to watch??

I then had a safety demo with three cabin crew stood at the front behind and to the side of me.... making sure I took note.....

I spent most of the flight laughing...... and at the end got a pic taken with my crew, as I know you sods would not believe me otherwise....

And the |Captain came up and shook my hand fter we landed.

He is interested in paragliding....

Undoubtedly a once in a lifetime experience. A 227 seat 757 all to myself.

Great fun!!

[John Wallis]

Brilliant

[Mike Brown]

And its a sad state of affairs we live in when they are not allowed to offer you the best seat in the house!!
Cheers

[Neil]

Whats the carbon footprint for that holiday then
You will have to plant a tree a day for the next ten years.
Iv got some acorns in the shed to get you started.

[brian day]

Could at least have provided you with a uniform so you could look like a Goat with them!
An I thought you were kidding about the weekend away

[jill mcgeachie]

Hi Alistair

Who did you book your flights with? I fancy going just for a bit of practice before the SIV

Jill

[AlastairW]

www.travelrepublic.com

Faye actually put me onto the website.

I flew with excel air. They have a more generous baggage allowance than Thomas Cook.... 20kg instead of 15kg

[Mike Brown]

And you could have had 20kgs X 226!!! 4520kgs!!!!

[jill mcgeachie]

Thanks Alistair

Thats who I booked Stuart, Ali, Faye and myself with for our holiday in September with. I've been searching all afternoon and can't find anything that cheap

[AlastairW]

The barstewards at check in still argued over my bag weighing 22kg..... and wanted to charge for the excess.!!!

At that point I feigned ignorance, and walked away to departure.....

[jill mcgeachie]

Last time we went we were 15kg overweight between the 4 of us and they wanted to charge us £100!!! Stuart argued with the guy like a man possessed scaring Faye and his daughter nearly half to death...........
needless to say, we got off with paying zero

The stewards in England never argue its always the turks