The first and hardest bit of the trip to Georgia was figuring out my flights. Georgia is not easy to get to from the UK.
There are no direct flights. There are rumours of a low-cost Georgian airline launching in May and operating direct flights from Gatwick, rumours which half the creators at Traverse are gleefully spreading but the new airline has no internet presence, you can’t book the flights yet and the only source of this rumour seems to be The Sun so we’ll wait and see.
I said on Monday that the flights were expensive and that I’d talk about it. Well, here are the problems that ended up meaning I spent more on planes than I would have liked. I spent the best part of two weeks refreshing SkyScanner and searching airlines’ websites to put something together that worked and in the end, I had to go for what worked rather than what my bank account liked.
Getting to Tbilisi
The big problem was that from the UK, I had to take at least two flights. Factoring in the distance and the four-hour winter time difference and the layover time, to get to Tbilisi without having to find a hotel for the night, no matter how early you left London, you still got into Tbilisi between 1am and 4am, pretty much. That wasn’t an option for me. I don’t want to arrive in a strange city in the middle of the night. I don’t want to find my way by bus or train at 4am, walk around town looking for a hotel that probably won’t let me check in and then spend 12-16 hours with all my stuff waiting to settle into my new home. It’s too dangerous and it’s too exhausting.
So I looked at Tbilisi Airport’s arrivals on its website and found a handful of flights coming from Europe that arrived at an acceptable hour. There was one from Vienna, a couple from Germany and one from Cyprus. I dithered about which one. In order to arrive by early evening, they all had to depart by early afternoon and there was no way to get to those flights from London in time. I dithered some more. Eventually, looking at connecting flights the day before, I settled for the Cyprus flight. My two options in the end had come down to Cyprus or Turkey. I’m sure it would all have been fine but I knew Georgia in itself would be just a little outside my comfort zone and I didn’t want to add in an overnight in Istanbul, which would also be a bit outside my comfort zone. With the flight home to stress about, I just didn’t want to add any unnecessary stress to the flight in. So Larnaca.
The Larnaca flight got in at 18:30 and then the Tbilisi flight left at 13:40. Somehow, arriving Sunday night and flying out again Monday morning felt wrong. I’ve got two flights that don’t quite connect and I need to spend a night in a hotel between them. Well, if I was spending the money to stay overnight, I might as well stay two nights and have a day and a bit in Larnaca on the way. Actually, I quite liked that idea.
Getting home from Tbilisi
Again, the majority of flights to the west departed between 4am and 7am, which meant getting to the airport in the middle of the night. Not an option, again. But this time I had the four-hour time difference on my side. I spent a while with spreadsheets again and came up with this option.
I could get a flight with Turkish Airlines that went from Tbilisi to Istanbul, and then I had just under two hours to change to a flight to Amsterdam on the same booking. But I couldn’t get a flight that continued to London – despite the fact that I later discovered some people had connected straight from Tbilisi to Istanbul to London. Wish I’d found that combination. The best I could manage was a separate flight with KLM back to London. Mercifully, there are plenty of those. They’re basically flying buses. Wait an hour and there’ll be another one. The first one SkyScanner suggested just didn’t allow enough time so I went for a later one. Arrive in Amsterdam at 16:55, fly out again 18:50.
On the one hand, Schiphol is designed for connecting flights. It’s easy. On the other hand, I only had two hours to play with. If either of my two earlier flights were delayed, I’d be scuppered. If my Tbilisi-Istanbul flight was late, I’d miss the Istanbul-Amsterdam but at least it’d be Turkish Airlines’ problem to get me to Amsterdam. If my second flight was late, my only option would be to rebook an entirely new flight and hope my insurance would be nice about it.
The other problem was that with only two hours for each change, I’d need to go with only hand luggage. The luggage should go straight through from Tbilisi to Amsterdam but then I’d have to go out through security and passport control to fetch my luggage and then check it and me in from scratch. Two hours was never going to be enough for that. So hand luggage only.
It was the most stressful day of my life. When I’d factored in two hours, I hadn’t considered that it’s at least half an hour from hitting the ground to actually getting off the plane, and you need to be at the gate half an hour before your next flight takes off. That means your two hours suddenly becomes one hour. Both airports might be optimised for transfer but they’re both big airports. I scurried. I had time to grab some food and then, mercifully, I had time to sit at the gate and eat it but it was still stressful and I heard myself making those panting-half-crying noises when I just can’t cope.
What I learned, though: when you transfer, you still need to go through transfer security. At Istanbul, that meant a long queue. At Amsterdam, it meant eight bored people in an abandoned corridor leaping up to greet me and get me through as quickly and easily as they could. However, there was no passport control. No queue for immigration and passport stamps. Legally, I was never in Turkey or the Netherlands. Amsterdam was the one where I was particularly concerned about how immigration might work. I’m coming from non-EU into EU and then transferring back out of the EU again. How does that legally work? Turns out it doesn’t, you fly into the non-Schengen part of the airport and just never leave. Never even entered the EU.
The other thing I learned is that when you transfer and you haven’t got a lot of time to connect, your second gate will always be at the opposite end of the airport and there will be people in your way.
I must have done connecting flights before. I definitely did when I went to Lithuania back in 2011. I vividly remember deciding to go hand luggage for the the first time ever but I don’t remember being stressed. I’ve changed in Oslo or Stockholm for flights up to or down from the Arctic a few times and don’t remember being stressed there either. Changing in Iceland is very different – you have to drive an hour from Keflavik Airport to Reykjavik Domestic and so you know you’ve got two entirely separate airport experiences. But this was like nothing I’ve ever done.
The big takeaway for me is that if I’m making connections like this ever again, I want at least three hours between flights but at least I know how the logistics work now and I know what I do and don’t need to worry about. Long live those rumoured direct Tbilisi flights.