Georgia. Flight from Tbilisi to Svaneti. Airports of Georgia Vanilla sky airline Georgia

The bet on the development of aviation has been made correctly, since a decent Western tourist chooses to travel primarily by plane, this saves time and nerves, and in a small country with an ambiguous reputation (for tourists) it is also a matter of safety. In addition, as is known, infrastructure projects are one of the main levers of economic recovery.

Against the backdrop of this development, Georgian airlines went bankrupt one after another. Georgian International Airlines (formerly Euroline) completely disappeared from the market. Sky Georgia, which not so long ago promised to open direct flights to New York for the first time in history, has completely stopped passenger flights, although the company’s website promises the resumption of passenger flights this summer. Air Batumi got rid of its old Boeing after a season of unsuccessful work in the Batumi market, announced the imminent appearance of the Fokkera-50, more suitable for short-haul lines, but the announcement has been on the company’s website for several months, and flights are still not operating. Against this background, things are going relatively well for Airzena's national carrier, Georgian Airlines, although the company was forced to abandon the newest aircraft in its fleet, the Boeing 737-700, and recently lost one of its CRJ-100 airliners during a plane crash in the Congo. But at least the flights did not stop. I believe that servicing the Georgian government and carrying out work commissioned by the UN is a serious help for the existence of Eirzena. And, of course, direct flights to Moscow opened not so long ago are a serious support for the airline. This year, Eirzena added flights from Batumi Airport to its route network, including a direct flight to Moscow on the Domodedovo schedule. Despite the growth in airport performance, this did not affect the activities of Georgian airlines at all. It is not clear what the reason is, but even Eirzena is not represented in key destinations, as there are no flights of Georgian airlines to such busy destinations as Baku and Istanbul, and formally only code-share flights of Ukrainian partners are carried out to Kiev from Tbilisi. Somehow this is not logical. There is no explanatory information on this matter.

With the revival of tourism in the famous Svaneti, the need for an airport arose and it was built relatively quickly near the town of Mestia. Surprisingly and incomprehensibly, the Canadian airline Kenn Borek was appointed as a translator in this direction (perhaps the Minister of Economy lobbied for a company from the country in which she worked before being appointed to work in the government?), they overtook a Twin Otter (by the way, this particular copy used to have water skis and carried out transportation on water), they brought pilots on duty and are working, often canceling flights due to poor visibility at the passes through which the route runs. Perhaps a foreign airline was chosen because there is no suitable fleet on the local market, and it is shameful to operate flights on Soviet corn carriers. The President promised that by 2012 new French aircraft (apparently of the APR brand) would be purchased for regional flights. It is not disclosed under which airline and for which routes this will be carried out, but for now Mestia is the only airport on which you can bet. A good deed, however, turned out to be unfinished; it is still impossible to book tickets from abroad on your own; there is no website. It is unclear why the flight to Mestia from Batumi was not launched... The new airport named after Queen Tamara, built by the architect Jorgen Mayer, underwent renovation just 4-5 months after its opening; it was re-painted and painted at the time of our presence there. The opinions of local residents about the architecture of the airport are divided; the fashionable building is really visible from many parts of the city, and for now it stands out from the surrounding view, which not everyone likes.

To purchase tickets for a flight to Mestia, I made a transfer to Georgia more than a month in advance and they bought me a ticket that cost about $45, that is, quite affordable. It seems that maize trucks still have flights from Natakhtari airfield, near Tbilisi, scheduled for the summer, prices are lower. Flights are operated by Vanilla Sky, but details are not available online.

We arrived at the airport as expected a couple of hours before, but registration opened literally just before departure. Since the tickets were purchased remotely and we did not have them, I assumed that the electronic ticket was electronic because it was in the system and there was no need to have a physical copy of it. But it was on this day that something happened to the system and they demanded a printout of the ticket from me (note that they politely and later sorted out the situation themselves), so it’s worth keeping this in mind, and not only in this case, recently there were completely blatant printouts of tickets the Latvian border guards demanded at the Riga airport, since there were no boarding stations for the second segment of the transfer flight, but that’s a completely different story.

Several people flying to Mestia were taken to the outskirts of the airport, accompanied by police. When I took out the camera and started filming the plane, they didn’t tell me anything. I’m leaving these details because in many countries a person with a camera is suspected of being a spy or a terrorist. In Georgia, these relics of the wild past also periodically emerge in the minds of particularly zealous citizens. (The Ministry of Internal Affairs should issue some kind of directive on this matter.)

A DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft, specially decorated with Svan towers and a call to spend the weekend in Mestia.

An-28 and the police car that escorted us:

Instruction in English:

These days, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite was visiting Georgia; there was a Lithuanian Air Force plane on the platform; it turns out that the president’s flight was accompanied by military personnel. On the background
The old building of the Novo-Alekseevka airport, which has undergone major renovation, is now a VIP terminal.

The plane is designed for 19 passengers, there is no toilet:

Flying over Tbilisi:

One of several refugee settlements near Tbilisi built after the war in August 2008:

We fly past Gori, located at the confluence of three rivers.

Goristsikhe fortress in the center of Gori:

On the right side you can see Tskhinvali in the distance; it turns out that the newly-minted capital is very small.

The plane makes a significant detour, flying over South Ossetia, and rushes northwest to the passes. At first the mountains are very small and somewhere far below, but they quickly grow and now we are maneuvering among the snow-capped peaks.

Behind these mountains is Russia:

The snow began to melt, creating patterns:

Landslide:

After 50 minutes of flight, the first Svan towers appeared:

Near the center of Mestia:

The runway is visible:

And a brand new airport:

We are going to land:

We taxi to the airport terminal building. When we landed I wanted to take a photo, but one of the policemen said that it was forbidden to take photographs. Then I asked how it was that it was possible in Tbilisi, but not here? Well then, take it off, he answered me.

Airport inside:

That citizen over there, looking straight into the camera, vilely told that I dared to photograph a security object to the very policeman with whom I described the conversation above. The policeman just waved him off.

The area around has yet to be improved.

Georgia. Flight from Tbilisi to Svaneti. June 14th, 2011