LN603
A320-300
This TR begins two days before the flight on the 23rd, when I began planning how to get to Tripoli. I knew there were flights, but it was all a question of getting a ticket. I walked around the corner to the travel agent nearest to my hotel to ask about flights. They told me it was completely booked for the next week.
I went back to reception at the hotel and they told me they know someone who works for the airline. The next morning (now the 24th) I went to the airline offices in Benghazi to check and met up with someone who the hotel put me in touch with. He was very helpful, pulled a few strings, and managed to get me on a flight for the next day leaving at 12:30. I paid 120LYD cash for the return flight - 55LYD each way plus 10LYD in taxes. That is about £63 on the real exchange rate, or about £53 using black market rates. (I use black market rates as that is really the only way to exchange currency in countries like these. You go in with a few thousand $, £, and euros in cash, and change it over when you need it).
The drive from my hotel to the airport is about 15-20 minutes. I got there at about 10:30, two hours before my flight. When you get to the airport you go through two armed checkpoints. The first one manned by the army, and the second one by the police. Once I paid my driver I walked into the terminal, well at least what I thought was the right part of the terminal. The guy manning the x-ray machines at the door told me to exit and go around to the right, when it was in fact the left. After a few minutes it was sorted though and I walked up to the correct door.
There was another American standing there who worked for an oil company flying out on a different flight to Tripoli who was having problems with his boarding pass. One of the few people who spoke English at the airport was helping him sort it out. He asked me to hand him my documents and I did. He returned a few minutes later with a boarding pass.
Now I'm not even sure how to describe the chaos of the check in area. There was one "queue" (more like a mass of people pushing and shoving for bag drop) for Tripoli, and another for Istanbul. People were sitting there with bags everywere, and some were even smoking, yes, inside the terminal! After a bit of fighting my way though, I made it to the front. I showed them my boarding pass and put my bag up on the scale to be weighed and tagged. Except it was just tagged - the scale wasn't on, so I'm not sure how the pilots calculated weights and balances! It seemed like you could check as many bags as you wanted - one guy behind me was checking 7, and some were almost a big as me!
Once my bag was tagged, I was given the recept which wasn't stuck on the back of my boarding pass as usual, but instead the entire non sticky half of the paper was handed to me.
I was directed to security by the same nice man who helped me with my boarding pass where there actually was a queue. After a few minutes I was called forward. I took off my jacket and place that along with my camera bag and my set of body armour (I didn't want to check it as I didn't trust them to keep track of my bag) on the x-ray belt. I took my nokia, iPhone, Blackberry, wallet, and satellite phone out of my pocket and was about to put it on the x-ray belt when the guy reading the x-ray machine took it from me and placed it on top. I walked through the metal detector and then collected my bag and jacket. The only security question I was asked was if I had any lighters or anything flammable in my bag.
Once that was done, I guy waved a handheld metal detector over me and I was on my way up the stairs. My boarding pass was checked (Not sure how much checking you can do on a blank boarding pass) and was stamped. I went to reach into my pocket to hand the guy my passport too, but he said OK, and just handed it back to me! I grabbed a seat and relaxed for a bit. (Think of the craziest, most maddening check in experience you have ever had. Now mulltiply it by 100, and this was it!).
I asked one of the guards if I could go outside to make a phone call on my satellite phone. He let me out onto a balcony overlooking the apron, and I made my call to my fixer in Tripoli. Every sat phone works differently, but for mine, the satellite covering Africa sits directly on the equator over central Africa, so you just point the antenna towards it and make your calls. While I was out on the balcony I took a few pictures and watched a very, very loud Air Libya 727 go a very long takeoff roll, and what looked like a 172 take off also.
Once that was done, I went back inside and waited a few more minutes. Boarding was called at 12:04. More chaos ensued. Since there were no assigned seats, it was yet again a free for all. My boarding pass was checked, torn off, and the small bit handed back to me. I made my way down a set of stairs to a bus, which took us the 100m or so to the plane. Once you got off the bus, you ID'd your bag to make sure it was there, and they loaded it. The TIP bag tag had fallen off my bag, and I pointed it out to one guy, who told me it wasn't a problem and loaded it anyways. I then waited as they let families on first, and soon after I was on the plane, finding a seat on the A side a few rows from the back.
The plane, while dirty, was very new - only 1.2 years old according to planespotters.net. The flight was almost full, just a few empty seats here and there. By the looks of things, I was the only Westerner on the plane. The flight safety video was played in Arabic, English, and sign language. There was no acutal safety demonstration - just the video.
As we waited for the food to be loaded - the same guy who drove the bus also drove the food lorry, a flight attendant came by with menthol flavoured mints. Also I should note the guy driving the food lorry/bus was the only one I saw wearing a high vis vest. Everyone else was either wearing military camo, or normal clothes!
A prayer in Arabic was played over the PA system/TVs for a safe flight while we were taxiing. Takeoff was at 12:50.
A few minutes after takeoff, a snack was served. It was a chocolate covered cake like thing (don't know how else to describe it!) along with pear juice boxes and water/tea/coffee. The pear juice was real juice - all natural with no water/surgar added - not like the stuff from concentrate you usually get.
Also, there was internet and mobile phone service on the plane! There may be no real working services in the entire country, yet you get it on an aeroplane! It was only 2G data - no wifi, but was fast enough for my to send a few tweets, update my facebook stats, check email, etc. I didn't try making any phone calls as the rates are exporbitant, but they arent blocked - you could make regular voice calls if you wanted to.
There was no IFE on the plane except for the moving map on the overhead screens, which rotated between English and Arabic. The 3D animation for the map was some of the most sophisticated I have ever seen on a plane. It wasn't just a 2D map, you flew around it, zoomed in and out, there was a 3D compass, etc.
We began our initial decent over Misrata, which is about 120mi from Tripoli. At 20min/56mi out, we began our final decent. 15 minutes out, the air brakes were deployed to slow us down for about 5 minutes. Touchdown was at 1:58.
I was off the plane about 15 minutes later via airstairs, even though the gates looked like they were working. I waited about 5 or 10 minutes for my bag on a baggage carousel about twice the size of the one in Benghazi., which did make it this time!
All in all, it was a very interesting experience. Once I was on the plane and in the air, it felt like any other normal flight I have had, but it was the before and after which was quite different.
I’m writing this from the Al-Khaleej Hotel (140LYD/night (£62/night black market rate) which is a four star in Tripoli. You still get lots of celebratory gunfire (and in these parts sometimes not so celebratory) which I kind of ignore. I used to jump a bit at the sound but today during a rally I was photographing a guy next to me unloaded about half a magazine (15 rounds) in the air and I barely turned my head. Not sure if that is a good thing or not....
Great to be sharing your experiences in such vivid detail.....rather you than me, tho 
