With our tour of Baku complete we headed back to the airport to continue our journey east to Uzbekistan!

GYD-TAS Uzbekistan Airways Flight# 756
Aircraft: A321-Neo UK32021
Class: Economy
Seat: 23A
Uzbekistan Airways offers online check-in (OLCI) on the majority of their flights, but not for flights departing Baku. As a result we had to wait in a very long line to speak to an agent at the checkin counter despite not needing to check bags. Baku, like many airports in the region, has checkin separated by flight number and we were able to quickly find the queue to join.


Uzbekistan now allows passengers from some countries (ex: USA) to enter visa-free if they are over 55. This information is reflected in TIMATIC, but the agents here did not seem to immediately understand the exemption. After our agent called over a few coworkers to consult they decided that we were indeed okay to fly and issued our boarding passes.

I was not willing to pay for pre-selecting seats and with no OLCI available we ended up having our seats randomly selected. They did keep all three of us together, but placed us in the second to last row which wasn't great. Reflecting back I think you can go in at T-24hrs and manually select your seat for free without checking in--I would recommend trying that.

Security and exit immigration is located at the top floor of GYD and was a relatively painless experience. With that out of the way we were spit out into a very... lets say unique terminal.







The terminal is pretty nice, but feels a bit weird. I can't really put my finger on what about it feels different from other airports I have been to, but it certainly did. It is very open and modern, but just felt different from say IST or BKK. One odd choice is the use of carpet everywhere. Not the best for roller boards, but not a huge issue either.

Unsure of exactly when our flight would be boarding we decided against visiting the Priority Pass lounge for any extended period of time, but I did quickly go up to grab a drink of water.

The lounge is also a bit odd. It's circular in design and has a few food offerings, but isn't something I would go far out of my way to visit.






Despite the gate being completely devoid of people until minutes before boarding began we started boarding at the scheduled time for an on-time departure.


Azerbaijan Airlines' 787 to JFK

Uzbekistan Airlines' A320 Neo is arranged in a 3-3 layout in economy and in a 2-2 layout in business. The seats aren't anything to write home about, but they have decent pitch, width, and include a modern, responsive, and bright inflight entertainment screen.





I'm glad they explain how eTickets work

A fun, Central Asian themed, safety video later and we off--goodbye Baku! Hopefully the next time I'm in Baku is for a little longer



The 2.5 hour flight over to Tashkent was fairly uneventful in economy, but there is a meal service about one hour into the flight. The meal comes in two parts, a standard cold box and a hot meal of your choice. The cold food was fine, but nothing special. Notably, the included chocolate muffin was pretty decent. As for the hot food the chicken was practically inedible and seemed to be pressed chicken. The buckwheat side was decent, but I found the meal to be disappointing overall.



"chicken"


The crew spoke Russian, Uzbek, and English well. I'm not sure if they spoke additional languages, but they used those three throughout the flight and we had no communication issues.





Uzbekistan Airways mainly uses bus gates at their home hub, Islam Karimov Tashkent International Airport, and this flight was no exception to that. A bus took us over to a very busy immigration hall which we were able to pass through without an issue.



After clearing customs you exit to an area filled with people offering their taxi services. I had ordered a taxi on Yandex (I would recommend this whenever possible) and they seemingly cannot enter the airport so you have to walk to the edge of the various parking lots before being able to find one.

TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN

We had booked two nights in the newly opened (2019) Hilton Tashkent that is located next to Tashkent City Park. The Hilton is significantly more expensive than almost every other hotel in the city, but is a very nice hotel. As is the case with most places outside of North America they actually care about Diamond status here and we were upgraded to their standard corner suite for free at checkin.



The light show on the exterior of the hotel is... interesting











After dropping off my bags I decided to head downstairs and see what Tashkent City Park had to offer. The gated park is full of life at night--the only coolish time in Tashkent--and has lots of interesting attractions and shows. I only spent an hour or so there, but there was seemingly a ballet show with water and light effects, a planetarium, various restaurants, and other attractions.





The ballet was taking place behind the water. On the other side there are seats.