DAY ELEVEN:

Khiva itself does not have an airport, but there is an airport about a 40 minute drive away in the neighboring city of Urgench. That said it isn't a very large airport and doesn't get a ton of flights. There only a few flights to Tashkent from UGC and for the day we were flying the options were either an 08:25 morning flight or a flight later that evening. As we planned to connect in Tashkent to Bishkek (not a daily service) the only option that worked was the morning flight.

With that in mind I had asked the hotel the day before if they could arrange a taxi to the airport for us. They agreed and settled on what I recall being a pretty reasonable sum--unfortunately I do not recall exactly how much it was.

Our rate included free breakfast so I got up a few minutes early to check it out.




I appear to have forgotten to take pictures of the actual food on offer here, but it was a pretty much what you'd expect from any random hotel. A selection of cold cuts, cheese, pastries, and fruit. Not a bad selection, but oddly certain drinks like coffee did require additional payment if I recall correctly.

Overall I quite liked the Arkanchi Hotel and would recommend it.

Now back to aviation!
UGC-TAS Uzbekistan Airways Flight# 52
Aircraft: A320-200 UK32016
Class: Economy
Seat: 7A

Urgench airport is fairly modern albeit small. Certainly not an airport where you need to arrive 2 hours before your flight (we didn't).




Uzbekistan Airlines allows online checkin for their domestic flights so I was able to get mobile boarding passes 24 hours in advance as well as select seats free of charge. The seat map was wide open at 24hrs out so I would caution against prepaying. I even managed to get SEQ #0001 woohoo!

However, I still don't entirely understand the purpose of OLCI in Uzbekistan. Security requires a physical boarding pass to stamp and the gate agents insist on ripping the ticket in two--not something you can do with a mobile boarding pass.

So... back to the checkin line for us. They had no issues printing our boarding passes and tagged our carryons without weighing them (we had paid for checked luggage, but prefer not to check).



After clearing security you arrive in the terminal (if you can call it that). There's a "bar" and some seating... that's about it.



Boarding commenced, my very real, very physical, not digital, paper boarding pass was ripped, and we walked out onto the ramp to board the A320 that would take us to Tashkent.




I had seat 7A for this short flight to Tashkent.



Not quite as nice as the Neo we had into Tashkent, but certainly adequate for a short hop like this.




Leg room was pretty decent too! No complaints here

With boarding and the safety presentation complete we began to make our way back to Tashkent!





I guess that's where the sand came from on the train... Much of Uzbekistan is a desert after all!

This flight takes just about an hour and as a result had minimal service. All that was served was a single drink, but the crew seemed pretty friendly and I'm sure they would have been happy to give seconds (in fact I saw someone a row or two back from me get their glass from the flight attendant, drink the whole thing and immediately request another).




Shortly thereafter we began our decent down into Tashkent Islam Karimov International.




After touching down it quickly became clear that we would be deplaning at a remote stand--as appears to be common for Tashkent. Not a problem... I thought--we had booked a single ticket with an ample connection time (at least according to Uzbekistan Airways).

We got off the plane and onto a bus that I was thinking would take us to the terminal we had flown into from GYD a few days earlier and were planning to depart from in a few hours. The bus came up to the terminal, but didn't stop. It kept going. And going. Until we reached the opposite side of the airport where it let us off.

It turns out there are two terminals at TAS and they are not at all connected. Domestic flights arrive/depart from a much smaller terminal (T3) directly opposite the international terminal. Uzbekistan Airlines does not inform you of this and there is no signage indicating the need to transfer terminals.

If you arrive in this position you have basically two options. Option 1: Walk the ~70 minute walk to the other terminal. Option 2: Order a taxi at your expense. It takes about 10 minutes via car.

I called a Yandex and we made it to the other terminal, but it certainly wasn't a fun or painless connection by any means. There are also tons of taxi drivers who would love your business directly in front of the terminal, but Yandex is usually an easier and cheaper option.



Terminal 3

TAS-FRU Uzbekistan Airways Flight# 779
Aircraft: A320-200 UK32016
Class: Economy
Seat: 5F

Over in the international terminal we were able to get our boarding passes. They were unable to issue the TAS-FRU boarding passes at UGC despite me checking in online and already having a digital boarding pass.

The agent at TAS was much more insistent on the carryon weight limit though. Despite still having the carryon tags on from the previous flight she required that they would be checked in. Not a major problem since the tickets I purchased included checked baggage, but not ideal as we would have to wait for them in Bishkek.

Oddly she was very interested in the carryon tags on my backpack and required that I remove them all. I had been collecting them from the previous flights on the trip and had left them all on thus far (the simple CARRY ON tags). For some reason she required I remove all of them. I complied and we got our boarding passes, but it was a bit odd.




After that you pass through passport control and security before entering one of the weirdest terminals I have seen.

Since we hadn't had lunch yet we went looking for a restaurant. Well it turns our there are no real sit down restaurants in TAS. There are also no easily accessible lounges. There is the CIP Lounge, but it costs US$150 per person and I highly doubt it could be worth that. In terms of food there are three small vendors in the terminal that sell sandwiches. After settling on one we were informed that they were not yet open, but would open soon. They never opened and I got a sandwich elsewhere. Prices were inline with European airports.




The cafe did have this cool Turkmenistan 777 model though! I'd love to fly on one of these!



While there aren't a ton of food options, there are quite a lot of souvenirs on offer in the terminal so if that's what you're going for you'll have quite a good time.

Overall I wouldn't say it's a bad airport, but it certainly is odd. If I knew about the multiple terminals and lack of food going into things I probably would have had a much better time so I certainly share some of the blame here.

After boarding via another bus gate I found my seat for this even shorter flight over to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.





The seats were the exact same as on the previous flight. In fact as the keen eyed among you may have noticed it was the exact same aircraft. So much effort going around the airport and I could have stayed right here the whole time!

We soon got to taxiing and started heading towards Bishkek.




Old School IFE

Not long after reaching cruise we began our descent down into Bishkek Manas International Airport (FRU).





Some closing thoughts on Uzbekistan Airlines as this was my final flight with them in the trip.

Overall I found them to be quite a good airline. The crews on all of the flights were very friendly and seemed to be happy to be flying which is always nice. The food, specifically the chicken on GYD-TAS, could be improved, but that isn't a major complaint. The seats are comfortable. TAS is a bit of an odd airport, but not impossible to navigate.

I wouldn't hesitate to fly them again and would be interested to see how their long haul product holds up on a route like JFK-TAS.

Now back to Bishkek...

After clearing passport control we waited a bit for our bags to arrive and then went out into the arrivals area.



BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN

This was my second time in Bishkek (read 7 Weeks in Kyrgyzstan Flyertalk TR for my first, and significantly longer, visit) so I had some friends meet us instead of taking a taxi, but Yandex Go works in Kyrgyzstan as well and is likely the best option to get from the airport to the city center.

You can get a fairly decent hotel in Bishkek for not a ton of USD, but I had some Hyatt points lying around and thought I'd give the Hyatt Regency a shot for our 3 day stay in the city.

The Hyatt arguably the second best hotel in the city behind only the Sheraton, but in my opinion has a better location. Neither has a bad location per se,ur but the Hyatt is a bit more centrally located.



Our room was nice albeit a bit dated by Hyatt standards--nothing to complain about though.






Unfortunately I didn't have a ton of time in Bishkek this time around so I won't go too into depth about the city.
However, it really is a nice place and if you are interested in learning more about it I recommend my previous report 7 Weeks in Kyrgyzstan Flyertalk TR