Introduction
This is the second segment of a trip to Georgia and Armenia, complicated by the fact that:
- the initial project included going to Azerbaijan as well
- relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are difficult
- relations between France and Azerbaijan have become difficult
Hence this routing, the genesis of which is described in the introduction to the FR of the CDG-AMS flight (to read, or read again, and comment upon, of course! :) :
Flight routing
- 1
- 2A9952 - Economy - Amsterdam → Tbilisi – Boeing 737-700
- 33F584 - Economique - Tbilisi → Yerevan - Boeing 737-300
- 43F583 - Economique - Yerevan → Tbilisi - Boeing 737-300
- 5A3897 - Economy - Tbilisi → Athens Airbus A320
- 6A3614 - Economy - Athens → Paris Airbus A321
AMS at rush hour
The CDG – AMS flight was supposed to arrive at 8:35 am at AMS, but that was without taking into account:
- the unloading of the luggage of 7 no-show passengers at CDG
- the detour to go past AMS and land on the Polderbaan
- taxiing from the Polderbaan to the terminal
- the time it took to disembark from an A319 that had become an A320
- the crowd in the terminal from the gate where we had disembarked

… and so upon arrival at the FIDS at the root of the jetty, it was already 8:55 am, and we had already uff 20 minutes off our two hours of raw connection time.

It didn’t seem like much, but that was actually enough to make this Schengen – non-Schengen connection tricky at a rush hour at AMS. A huge crowd was gathered in front of the Schengen exit control. It was impossible to determine where the line would be for European passports (and a few others, suitable for automatic reading terminals, and in any case, it was not of much use, because employees called every ten minutes the passengers whose flight would leave before a certain time to give them priority. Only when we nearly reached the goal did we finally enter this priority category!
All what remained was to reach gate D24, which was not exactly next door, and we reached it at 9:45. It had taken us 55 minutes since deplaning!
I had promised my wife that she would be invited in the non-Schengen lounge where our Elite+ friend would be waiting for her, but we arrived much too late for that. One more reason not to regret no longer having an Elite+ status !

The plane operating our flight was 4L-GTI, named Telavi, and was of course already at the gate!

The pitcture above is a homemade collage of two picture, because the windows are equipped with horrible blinds whose small spacing prohibits doing better than this in one shot.

Boarding: the cabin of a Georgia Airways 737-700
By the time my wife had been to the nearby toilets, boarding has already started, admittedly long before the flight time, since it was still only 9:53 there.

Not much to see from the gateway

Door shot, with the 180° opening typical of a 737

Fuselage shot

Three (or four?) rows of J in 2+2 layout

And behind, the vintage seats of economy class, rather comfortable ones at that.

I had bought our tickets from KLM, which as is usually the case in code sharing, did not have control over the seating plan, and A9 gave us the worst possible set of leftovers, namely two middle seats one behind the other. It was possible to change our seat at online check-in, but the good occupancy rate had left only middle seats scattered here and there.

Note that that the superstition concerning the number 13 does not apply to Georgian Airways, unlike most Western companies.

The seat pitch was not great, but that it was 1 cm more than on the preceding AF flight.

And just like in the aforementioned A320, the backrest could recline 8°. Better not to try to use your laptop if the passenger seating in the previous row wants to sleep.

44 cm between armrests: no surprise, it’s a 737 :(

… with a box which reduces the space under the seat

Being able to close the vintage air vents is a plus, in my opinion

The safety card, front and back

Georgian Airways continues to publish an in-flight magazine

… whose main interest in my eyes is to show that TBS cannot be a connecting hub with such an almost exclusively westward network.

View of the cabin, which was going to be quite full. My hopes of finding something better than my middle seat after boarding was complete had evaporated

Pushback at 10:40, right on time

Freighters in the freight area on the other side of the runway 24

Takeoff runway 24

Flying middle seat
The Westeinderplassen, and some of its hundreds of islands accessible only by boat

The passenger in the window in the row in front of me was not interested in the landscape, but in catching up sleep

The first glimpse of the trolley left little doubt about the drinks on offer: it was going to be water only, but the tip of red caps indicate sparkling water, so discreetly that I thought there was only still water.

Food was this sandwich, barely more than 15 cm long

… containing two slices of cheese, and that was it

My sandwich was dated October 5th… and that of my wife was September 5th!
Maybe that was because she was in row 13?

A visit to the toilets only revealed trilingual signs in Georgian, English and Russian, which had little effect on one of the passengers who followed me: these toilets, perfectly clean when I arrived, were in an indescribable (and unpublishable) state when our friend went there later.

On the other hand, these chests located above the corridor (containing life rafts) …

… are labeled in English and French.

New trolley passage, with alcohol for a charge

Glimpse of mountains in the distance (photos taken as well as I could from my middle seat, during the beginning of the descent)

… and semi-desert landscapes

I was unable to locate these curious (agricultural?) constructions in the foreground above the wing

Landing was getting close

Arrival at TBS
Landing at TBS: the modern control tower on the left and the old one on the right

A Mil Mi-8 from Tusheti Airlines; I do not know how old she was, since this helicopter has been in production for over 50 years.

Arriving at contact and deplaning near A6-AOC, an Air Arabia A320ceo

Like Paris, Tbilisi claimes to love us

TC-JSP, a Turkish Airlines A321ceo called “Şırnak”

Not much walking needed in a bright terminal

Last look at 4L-GTI

RA-89156, a Sukhoi Superjet 100-95LR Red Wings

Going down to the luggage claim area after immigration, that we went through quite quickly

Delivery of the Marathon suitcase 37’ after arrival at contact: an honorable but not exceptional overall delay.

Airside arrival: there were a dozen foreign exchange booths displaying mainly the buying-selling rates of USD, EUR and RUB

The rates were sometimes significantly different from one booth to the next; the most competitive ones showed a particularly small gap between the purchase and sale rates

At the end of the terminal, the car rental counters

And shops offering local SIM cards for any data plan purchase

Renting the car was going to be quite time-consuming, not least because we waited for the sole staff to come back from the parking lot. Finally leaving the terminal

The rental car park is very close: this was the end of the terminal

Some plane spotting at dusk with a venerable GeoSky 747-200 freighter

B-223M, a 757-200 SF Airlines is in her prime either

4L-GTR, one of two Georgia Airways 767-300s

One of two Camex Airlines 737-800s

What if we hadn't rented a car? There are taxis and Bolt (for the latter, expect to pay around 33 GEL = 11 EUR), but there are much cheaper options: the bus costs 1 GEL, with a departure every 15-20 minutes.
Still too expensive for you? At the symbolic rate of 0.50 GEL, a train leaves from this futuristic-looking station opposite the terminal, but there is a catch: according to the latest news, there are exactly two trains per day, at 8:45 and 18:05!

Thanks for reading!
Bonus: road adventures to the towers of Mestia
Mestia, its Unesco World Heritage towers, its airport for experienced pilots, its road access to the end of the Georgian world and the exotic traffic conditions on this road: all this can be discovered in the tourism bonus.
Thank you for sharing this A9 report with us Marathon. AMS looks about as efficient as FRA for Schengen to non-Schengen transfers. The seats like the plane (though not 500 series) look very classic, but I do not envy your punishment of a middle seat on a narrow-body for a flight of this length with a meager ration of bread, cheese, and water. Seat selection is not complimentary or could not be obtained via telephone? Tea/coffee are also not complimentary or is the cost to boil the water too high?
Surprised SFO is omitted since it is home of their only consulate outside of the East Coast.
Likely from the plane's Canadien past life^^
Even if A9 doesn't serve destinations to the East, at least there is cargo from Xinjiang^^
This is what my wife often endures on our (admittedly usually shorter) European flights, trading comfort with proximity with her window seat addict husband.
Seat selection is not complimentary, and I am ready to both save my penny-pinching reputation AND report on this website what the base fare really gets you. 😉
There are only so many airports you can serve with a single 767 supplemented with codesharing
Georgia is an unlikely cotton-growing region, if the aim is to mask shady origins.
Thanks for your comment !
That 767 would likely not make it to anything farther than JFK (HY used to have to stop in RIX, if I remember correctly), so assumed everything in the Americas was leveraging AF/KL codeshares.