lmsl1967 wrote:
Contact Spiros at LCLK.+357 99 66 26 17
Hi Luis
I am going to call Luis tomorrow. Before I do that could you please tell me who he is, or who his handling company is. It is very difficult to get any info on handling at Larnaca. So far all I have discovered is Skylink, who seem to be a top of the line Jet handling company. I am waiting for a quote from them, but would love to find someone else.
Paul
You should consider Paphos. It’s a much more relaxed airport there. Try to contact: [email protected] – he is managing the GA hangar in LCPH
Thanks BerlinFlyer. My preference is Larnaca as I am connecting to a commercial flight to Israel from there and back again. But if I cant get any help at Larnaca we might end up using Paphos.
I fly that route regularly.
Last years Ercan Control (Turkish side of the island) started to transfer pilots to Nicosia Radar, giving the correct frequency. That’s on the way Turkey – Cyprus. You still have to “announce” yourself on the second radio to Nicosia at least 10 minutes before crossing their FIR boundary, reporting current FL, squawk and estimated time of the FIR entry.
On the way back Larnaka – westbound (via Turkey), Also – call Ercan Control 10 min before entering Turkish space with the same details, but then expect that Nicosia will intentionally transfer you to the WRONG freq of Ankara Radar, which will be probably beyond your radio range.
Instead just go directly to Ercan Control and it will be just fine.
I just saw that my initial post in this thread is now over 2 years old but I can finally report that we did fly to Cyprus!
A few notes for others trying to do the same:
1) Why Cyprus?
We did plan to fly to Cyprus in the first place as we wanted to do some sailing very late in the summer season end of October. Cyprus did promise to still have air temperatures around 26-27C and water temperatures for nice swimming. Lately the very first bareboat charter company on Cyprus did open (Globalia Yachting) so we went and Cprus did not disappoint on the weather and temperatures. It is also a very interesting place. But the coast length is limited and also the number of protected bays, harbours etc. is very limited. Also some bays have mass tourism from hell. So sailing one week we saw most of the interesting bits, no comparison to Greece etc. where you can explore little islands, bays etc. forever.
2) LCPH / Paphos
Cyprus has 2 usable airports LCPH and LCLK. Both are airports of entry with long opening times, fuel etc, both have commercial traffic. Paphos is mainly Ryanair with less traffic while the traditional carriers seem to fly to Larnaka LCLK.
Both airports seem to be served by the same handling companies and have the same state mandated price list for airport services.
The big issue with both is long term parking cost. There is a complicated formula which results in about 50 Euro per day parking charges. That is the same at both locations. We choose LGS Handling, which was a good choice in the end. LGS is the one actually doing the work on site. Others probably just subcontract LGS and charge extra. Their charges are 145 EUR for a 2 ton aircraft (maybe with AOPA discount, not sure it did make a difference) which did include PPR, handling, bus transports, luggage transport etc.
Landing charges etc. at the airport seem to be about 70 Euro so our overall airport cost was 575 EUR for a 1 week stay.
In general LCPH works well but did require a huge amount of emails. CAA had to approve the flight, wanted copies of passport of aircraft owner, passenger list, CAA did not want to talk to us directly but just to the handling agent. Did not matter in the end as we needed them anyway and they did not charge extra for all that work.
My inbox counts 16 emails from the handling company. Just make sure to refuse the luxury “meet and greet” options from handling. No idea what those contain but they would cost 3 digits per passenger.
Paphos has not GAT so you get handled through the commercial terminal. Even large baggage gets put on a belt and will be delivered to the aircraft. We even got our own gate with a reasonably sized bus for 2 people:
Parking is on a separate GAT apron which has 8-10 spots drawn on the tarmac. The PA46 just about fits. Anything bigger gets parked on the general apron. I saw some jets and twins parked there. Overall lots of space, so probably no parking issues.
We did refuel JetA1 with World Fuel at a reasonable price. The tanker came immediately, was just suspicious to refuel JetA1 on the small GA ramp (a first for this tanker driver).
3) The flight to Cyprus
The distance from our homebase near Berlin was about 1400NM. Our PA46 can do this in 2 legs of about 3 hours each unless there are massive winds. Windy did show weak winds about 1 week before the flight and I did finalized the stops. Outbound we did stay overnight at LYTV Tivat. It was of season and everything worked well. We refuel quite cheap with World Fuel. Airports charges less than 100 Euro as usual. But the weather was already feeling like fall even this far south (the reason we went all the way to Cyprus in the first place).
The next day we had an amazing flight with great views over the entire Aegean sea. At FL290 we just went out of gliding distance for a short time approaching Cyprus. Landing at Cyprus even before getting out of the plane we could feel immediately we landed in “summer”. The entire IFR flight was normal as in the rest of Europe, normal hand overs etc. Just Paphos tower seems to have no radar which is strange for such a big airport.
4) The flight home
A week later we did the return flight in a day with a fuel stop of LYNI, Nis in Serbia. This flight went up the coast of Turkey in Turkish airspace. ATC was very good, as in Europe. Again all hand overs as usual.
Nis is a little aiport in the middle of nowhere but with all services, airport of entry, JetA1 at 1,10 EUR / l and 30 Euro landing fee. Just watch out for the opening times published by NOTAM.
Summary:
We had an amazing trip flying as much south east as we have never been before! It took more advance email communication than usual but as a result everything worked very well without bad surprises. Overall cost was as expected with things levelling out. Cyprus airport charges have been higher than usual but Serbia and Montenegro provided cheap Jet A1 and low airport fees in return.
Congratulations Sebastian. If you ever go again, thanks to @Luis I found a great handling company in Larnaca LCLK – Airmotive. Run by a terrific guy called Spiros. Fees and parking were same as you quoted for Paphos. If you have a bit of maintenance done by Spiros at the same time the plane is officially “Off the ramp” and you will save a bit on parking. I had my tyre pressure checked and a couple of things oiled etc.
Spiros also says he can arrange entry permits for GA to Israel, which is the holy grail for me. I havent checked yet whether he can really make this happen, but it would be great if true.
Awesome trip Sebastian! Great to hear you enjoyed it.
Sounds like an epic trip. I see you also didn’t mention the usual weather up the Adriatic. Was clear both ways?
Sebastian_G wrote:
Paphos has not GAT so you get handled through the commercial terminal. Even large baggage gets put on a belt and will be delivered to the aircraft. We even got our own gate with a reasonably sized bus for 2 people:
I went to Paphos in Summer many years ago. The terminal is so overloaded with the sheer number of people. So much so, that ATC delay inbound aircraft due to the problems. It doesn’t look too bad in the picture, was it rammed?
Thanks for the writeup. Maybe next time try Larnaca to compare. They have a decent private terminal with a large lounge and fridge with complimentary drinks. We used Swissport there and there was a Lady with a swissport vest, so I guess not LGS. They had a van too.
pilotrobbie wrote:
I went to Paphos in Summer many years ago. The terminal is so overloaded with the sheer number of people.
Actually it was good. On arrival the luggage pick up area was deserted with only us in there. On departure they have been a few people going through security but no issue. I just recommd using yellow vests. In the old days you did need a pilots uniform and today it is a yellow vest so normal passengers are not offended when you get inserted at the front of the queue for security ;-)
pilotrobbie wrote:
Paphos in Summer
I talked to the local sailors, looked at the weather and the general bottom line is to travel in fall. In summer it gets so hot it is hard to stand and most probably the crowd can get horrible. We sat in nice harbour restaurants but imagining all their tables filled the place would turn to hell.
