Dec 30, 2013
Flight: Cairo, Egypt (CAI) to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (ADD), Ethiopian, economy
Flight: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (ADD) to Brazzaville, Rep Congo (BZV), Ethiopian, economy
Hotel: Hippocampe Hotel; Brazzaville, Congo; 28000 CFA ($60)
Finally we start boarding for the 2AM (ugh) flight to Addis. This would be the third time I had been through Addis airport in 2013! The flight was pretty uneventful but I still wasn't able to sleep. The seat pitch was pretty tight and I had problems getting my legs comfortable enough. I thought I had picked seats for this route but ended up way in the back of the bus. We arrived about 7AM to a gorgeous sunrise.

CAI-ADD Ethiopian

I was surprised there was no security check for transit flights (screening is apparently done at the gate) so transit passengers just went upstairs to the departure hall. I headed to the lounge and took a minute before the agent would accept my UA Club Card as I hadn't brought my gold card with me. The lounge looked a bit rundown and the wifi was horribly slow. I was pretty worn out and sweaty already by this point.. I hoped everything would go well with the Kinshasa flight.

Boarding was via jetbridge to the 767-300 plane. It actually looked pretty nice and new compared with one of their 767's. I saw their 787 plane was here. I was originally supposed to fly the 787 back to Washington DC during my Yemen/Djibouti trip earlier this year but that was when they had mothballed the 787 due to the battery fire issues.

The flight to Kinshasa was about 4 hrs.. and I noticed on the flight map we skirted around South Sudan. As we were coming towards Kinshasa the captain came on and made an announcement 'Our operations center in Addis has advised us to divert to Brazzaville. No additional information yet'. The flight does a triangle route, ADD-FIH-BZV-ADD so Brazzaville was a planned stop. We come in low over Kinshasa then bank across the Congo river and make a landing at Brazzaville airport.

ADD-BZV Ethiopian 767-300


Congo River. DRC to the left, Congo to the right

They still hadn't made any announcement as to the cause of the diversion. The people getting off in Brazzaville left the plane and we sat around for awhile. Eventually the captain came on the plane and said there had been political unrest in Kinshasa.. the plane would be returning directly to Addis. That caused a bit of a mini riot on the plane with people pushing and shouting. I already had my Congo-Brazzaville visa (and it was valid), so I decided to get off the plane here anyway. I go to the plane door where a crowd has gathered, they are explaining that they will go back to Addis and people could come the next day. I was waving my passport with visa around and the flight attendants said I could get off here. Easier said than done as a manager came up the steps and was talking to people during the arguing... suddenly a pushing and shouting match breaks out as he tries to leave, people grab him and won't let him leave the door!!

BZV airport

I'm right in the middle of all this but eventually manage to squeeze through the throng and down the stairs. The bus has already left so the agent there says I must wait. Eventually the captain comes down and said 'yeah there was an attack on a TV station and the airport..which usually only means one thing. We're better off here than there'.

I had to wait awhile for the bus to come, and I was the only passenger. The terminal building was brand new, built by the Chinese. When I arrived to the immigration desks, the officials had already gone home! Someone took my passport and told me to go sit and wait. So I waited... and waited. My French unfortunately isn't very good so didn't understand what was going on. Finally after an hour and a half I saw a big crowd of people enter the terminal, they had been on my flight so the plane must still have been there. Most of them would not have had a visa so I'm not sure exactly what happened to them. Finally an official shows up, takes my passport again and disappears. I went to tell him I already had a visa and had been waiting for a long time, and they stamp me into Congo, 2 hrs after I had landed.

I already had some Central African Franc (CFA) left over from my trip to Gabon a few years back so was able to head directly to the taxi and ask for the Hippocampe hotel. They wanted 3000 ($6) and wouldn't take 2000. I finally arrive to the hotel around 3PM and luckily they had a room. I already had a reservation for arriving in two days when we had originally planned to cross from Kinshasa. The hotel was mostly shut down over the holidays so it was pretty dead.

Hippocampe Hotel

I asked about a ATM machine and headed off down the street. Brazzaville seemed very calm, clean and organized city, especially when compared with its chaotic neighbor Kinshasa across the river. I was able to find a working ATM (BCI works). This was about 5PM and all the men in suits were leaving their offices. I soon headed back to the hotel. I was able to get in touch with ironmanjt.. initially he said his flight was showing diverted to Brazzaville as well but eventually it was cancelled. So that left us in a mess as the flights LBV-BZV/FIH aren't every day. I had a quick dinner and went to crash.. what an exciting/tiring day it had been.