- What's up guys, and Jagshemash I am here at Tbilisi
International Airport in Georgia. Today I'm going to be flying with number four airline
in whole of Kazakhstan, SCAT Airlines. From here over to Almaty, stopping at Aktau in Kazakhstan. What will it be like flying on SCAT Air? Will it be as bad as the name suggests or will it be very nice? Let's head inside and find out. (exciting music) ♪ I'm a scat man ♪ The terminal building here at Tbilisi is very nice indeed. It opened in 2017 at a
cost of over $30 million. SCAT Airlines leaves Tbilisi at about two o'clock in the morning, so I have quite a few hours here to fill time at the airport. I decided to try a
traditional Georgian dish called abkhazura, which is basically spicy meatballs. High five. Other than the little restaurant, there wasn't really much more to do outside before we could check in. Check in finally open
about 11:30 at night. Thank you. - You have any hand luggage? - Oh, just this. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. At least having the emergency exit, meant that I'd be first
out if anything happened. I should mention that until very recently, Scat Airlines, were completely banned from flying in Europe, as they were on the EU no fly blacklist. I'm not going to lie. I was a little bit nervous about this evening's flight. I headed across to the Prime class lounge, which I got access to with my Priority Pass membership. Priority Pass is a great scheme that gets you access to
over 1200 airport lounges all around the world. Regardless of which airline or class of travel you're flying in. Check out the link in
the description below for a nice discounts off a membership. The prime fast lounge
here is pretty compact and, there aren't any
views over the airport, but still it's really comfortable and a nice place to spend a few hours ahead of your flight. There's a nice range of complimentary food and drink here. But just remember the alcohol isn't self service here. And you have to go to the bar to get it. It's still free though. So I'm here at the Prime Class lounge, at Tbilisi see international airports here in Georgia. Got a really nice glass of Georgian white wine here. Georgian wine is absolutely
delicious by the way. Even the dry is really
drinkable and really nice. It's very good. Highly recommend it. We usually get actually a bottle of Georgian wine given at the passport check as
you come through here, but it seems I've stopped doing that now. About another hour then before my flights over to Aktau in Western Kazakhstan. It's literally an hour flight from here on a CRJ 200. So quite looking forward to that with Scat Airlines. And I've got a couple of hours in Aktau, before we had a cross to
the East of Kazakhstan to Almaty, on a Boeing 737, 300 really old plane
they got in their fleets. They're not exactly the most modern aircraft in the world. The CRJ, or the 737, but it's a nice unique way to get across Kazakhstan. So quite looking forward to my experience with Scat Airlines. Glass of wine finished, it was time to head to the gate. Tonight we were boarding from an escape which meant we had to go downstairs to the ground floor. While I was waiting to board my flights, I got a breaking news alert on my phone. It was to tell me that a Boeing 767 aircraft, had crashed on approach to Houston airport in the U S. It was tremendously sad to hear about it, and to be honest, not what I wanted to read about really when I was about to walk one of the most dangerous
airlines in the world. Feeling rather shaken from the events over in the U S, I headed out to the bus that would take me to my aircraft for tonight's flight. It was pretty cool to be driving right past the Antonov 124, that I seen on the ground earlier on. And here's the aircraft that would take me over to Aktau in Kazakhstan this evening. It's a 15 year old bombardier CRG 200, originally delivered
to the German airline, Eurowings since 2004. It's been flying with Scat Airlines in Kazakhstan since 2012. Once inside, the cabin
looked fairly dated, but still relatively comfortable for such a short flight. I headed to my seat in
the exit row, row eight. I don't usually enjoy the exit row because it means I can't have my back onto the seat in front of me, but, actually the extra leg room was really welcome on tonight's flight. The window was rather predictably, very scratched indeed. I won't lie, as we pushed
back from the gate, I was actually pretty nervous about tonight's flight. The flight attendant came around, handing out pre takeoff sweets. And also reminded me rather helpfully that in the event of an emergency, I'd be the first person off the plane. Great success. - You're sitting right to emergency exit. In case of emergency, you'll be assistant passenger. Please read this instruction. - Yes. - Okay. So for the first time ever, I actually paid attention to what he said. And took a look at how the door opens and tried to memorize it as much as possible just in case you know. Taxi down to the runway to begin our flight
across the Caspian sea. Here we go. We lifted off into a beautiful clear sky over head to Tbilisi. And some great views of
the city lit up at night. The tower that you can
see lit up in purple, its the Tbilisi TV broadcasting tower. It's one of the major
landmarks of Tbilisi, and stands almost 275 meters tall. So let's take a look at the route of tonight's first flight. After I've seen it departure from Tbilisi. We flew East over Georgia, across the Kazakhstan
region of Southern Russia and out over the Caspian sea. From there it was an approach at landing into Aktau's runway, which is just on the coast of Kazakhstan. Fly time tonight was 57 minutes. at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet. It was really a very short flight tonight, so there was just time
for a quick drink service. as we crossed the Caspian sea. Before too long, we were
on our final approach to what can only be
described as a smash down, on runway 12 at the desert city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. It was pretty fun landing guys. The rather nervous clapping from some parts of the cabin, stopped as soon as it was
clear that the pilots, had no intention of
starting to brake just yet. I breathed a rather nervous sigh of relief as we've taxied off the runway, and I easesd my grip on the arm rest. We pulled into the stand
at Aktau right on time Aktau is one of Scat
Airline's largest hubs. And that's cause it flies
all across Kazakhstan and the Caspian region. It didn't take very long at all, before I got my first telling off on Kazakh soil. This guy didn't seem to impressed I'd just taken a picture of the plane. Fortunately, me feigning ignorance kind of helped me in this situation. And he just turned back around to continue his fateful duty of protecting glorious
nation of Kazakhstan, against the global threat of unauthorized photography. Aktau airport is much smaller than I imagined it would be. After completing my entry
card into Kazakhstan and getting stamped through
with the passport check, I made my way through
to the departure hall. There's no outside
connections here at Aktau, so you just have to go back through security again. It's a tiny airport though, so this really isn't a problem at all. I had about five hours
ahead of my next flight, so I was really hoping to find somewhere to get my head down for a few hours. However, it seems that the only thing that you have air side Aktau, is this little departure lounge and a cafe at one end, so I was going to have to make due for a few hours sleeping here. There were a few other people sleeping on seats here in the departure lounge. There are quite a few connecting flights through Aktau even if you can imagine. I was however really surprised to find quite a few British
people sleeping here. It seems that the people working in the gas and oil industry, which is one of Kazakhstan's
largest industries, Aktau is the convenient place to connect into the smaller towns and cities around Kazakhstan. Right, so, um-- I have about four hours
until my flight to Almaty, so I'm trying to get some sleep. Its three o'clock in the morning here in Aktau Kazakhstan. And my next flight out is about seven o'clock or something. My way of canceling the nice here, pop in, silence. My travel pillow which
look kind of looks like a, my master shadow of a lime, which kind of looks a
bit silly and ridiculous. Something like that. It blocks all the light as well. Its quit comfortable
actually surprisingly, so much I can get a few hours of sleep. Let's try get some sleep. Okay, so it is 20 past six in the morning. I think I have managed
a little bit of sleep, but not a great deal Here at, the Aktau airport in Kazakhstan. Just heard of the turn of events. My flight over to Almaty is delayed by about an hour. So that's every single Scat flights headed out of Aktau will be
delayed for eight hours. I don't know what's going on. It may just mean that I have missed my connection out of Almaty, which I'll have to look at separately, its not with Scat, I don't know what I'm
going to do with that. Fingers crossed we can get that changed to a bit of a later time
or something like that. Let's see. So yeah, I think I'm going
to go speak to somebody, figure out what's going on. And see how just delayed we going to be here this morning. That was rather naive
and optimistic of me. Of course, there was nobody from Scat Airways anywhere to be found. My original plan when I got to Almaty was to connect down to
Tashkent with Air Astana and then connecting to Uzbekistan Airways, my flight back to Frankfurt. However, with the delay from Scat Airways now
reaching two hours long, I'd clearly missed this connection and I have no idea how I was going to get home. at the other end. I'd originally booked about
a 90 minute connection in Almaty which I thought
was plenty of time, but clearly in Kazakhstan, there is no such thing as too much time. A little over two hours after our scheduled departure time, we were called to boarding via gate 202. However all was not as it seems and on arriving at gate 202, I was told that this was the wrong gate and this was actually a
flight going somewhere else in Kazakhstan. So I made my way back once again to the departure hall. Lack of any information whatsoever on any of the departure boards, really didn't help me at all. But somebody soon came round and shouted that our flight to Almaty was going to be departing
through gate 102, not 202 so, off we went to gate 102. Once again I'd been sent to completely the wrong gate. But this guy told me to just stand around and wait for my flight to Almaty will be going pretty soon. Or at least that's what I heard. Most of the people here were waiting for the same flight as me. And fortunately, I had the sense to ask the gate agent whether this was the right flight, as loads of people just ended up boarding completely the wrong flight and having to come back. It didn't help that they weren't actually checking the boarding passes, as people were getting on the flights. They were just handing them across and then scanning them all in once the flight had departed. Once the boarding passes had all been scanned in and they realized that half the passengers were on the wrong flights another add of passengers joined us down here at gate 102. Surely this was going to be my flight first time look here I know that. What happened next I found
absolutely hilarious. Every passenger that
had just come downstairs fought their way to the front to try and get out to the bus first. I'm really not quite sure
what everybody's hurry was. However, once again, it
soon became very obvious that this wasn't the Almaty flight either. Once again the gate agent took everybody's boarding passes off them and then they started scanning them through as the flight had departed At which point she realized that half of people
boarded the wrong flight. A couple made it back to the gate, but most didn't. So I have absolutely no idea where those passengers ended up that day. Finally, after waiting down at this gate for about half an hour, the flight to Almaty was
announced for boarding. As rather hesitantly gave the Gates agent my boarding pass and made sure that she had scanned it to make sure I was on the right flight before I actually cleared out to the bus. Thankfully, finally, it was the right one. And so when the Almaty passengers had been crumped down to the bus and presumably some passengers that were due to be flying somewhere else. We made our way over to
the waiting aircraft, that would take me East
to Almaty this morning. My ride East to Almaty today was on this 21 year old Boeing 737 300, painted in Scat's shiny new livery. Unfortunately the inside of this aircraft wasn't quite as shiny as it looked from the outside. This aircraft was originally delivered to a Garuda Indonesia airlines in 1998. Since then it's had a colorful history. Flying for airlines
such as air New Zealand Freedom Air international, Webjet airlines in Mexico, Vivaaerobus, also in Mexico. And finally the delightful Scat Airlines, who have had this aircraft in their fleet since 2017. Once on board you couldn't escape the luminous green seats. And beaten up cabin that
this aircraft still had. I don't think this aircraft
has seen any renovation in the 20 odd years
since it started flying. I took my seat in row 17 which is right towards
the back of the aircraft. The state of the cabin was very poor. The seats were really worn out and in places that cabin looked like it was falling into pieces. We eventually pushed back
from the gate about two and a half hours after our
scheduled departure time. The fun didn't stop there. I started looking out the window I noticed a bit of a commotion going on across the tarmac. It was a dog being chased across the airport by two guys. And to be fair it didn't look like they we're being successful. I just wondered how much more excitement we could take on this trip. As we taxied down to the
runway here at Aktau. As we climb out over
the desert of Kazakhstan let me talk you through the route that we took today. After takeoff, we flew Northeast towards the Uzbekistan border. Across the North of Uzbekistan, and then directly East across the Plains of Kazakhstan to Almaty. Flight time today was two hours 40 minutes at an altitude of 33,000 feet. So during this fight took place on a Sunday morning, I thought the flight was really full. Scat Air are one of the
largest domestic airlines here in Kazakhstan. And a lot of people use it as it offers the cheapest fares generally compared to the other airlines. The views out the window
were pretty incredible I have to say. And it was much like flying over the Southwest of the USA. As the breakfast service started, I began to wonder what delights I'd have facing me today for breakfast. It's delightful meal is
what I have my breakfast. It was sweet pancakes with some sort of meat substitute product in it, with some sort of random
cheese slice placed on the top. And also a cake which
was ominously named boom. Not really the sort of thing I want to see when I'm flying. The food tasted absolutely revolting. I didn't even manage a full mouth full I have to say. I drank the water down orange juice and gave the rest back
to the flight attendant. I was absolutely starving, but I wasn't that hungry that I was going to eat that. The cabin was really worn out. It's been in use for a very long time. It doesn't look like
he's ever been refreshed. I thought I'd take a quick look through this Scat Air magazine. It's all written in Kazakh or Russian but it does include some information about the fleet of aircraft that Scat Airlines fly. They have such a wide
range of Boeing aircraft as well as a load of CRJ. 200 They operate all across Kazakhstan, on the local region. Scat actually stands for Special Cargo Air Transport. It was founded in 1997
and has its main base. It Shymkent international airport. The airline was banned from flying in the EU until about two years ago. And in the last couple of years they've only had two major accidents. One of which didn't have
any passengers on board. Rather worrying though, the other one was on approach to Almaty airport, which is where are we heading to today. Scat does seem like a
really popular choice for people flying around
Kazakhstan cheaply. The sky over Kazakhstan are pretty busy. And we did pass a couple
of other aircraft, making their way down to China, which was just the South of us. Or heading West back to
Europe from the far East. My flights from Tbilisi across to Almaty today cost me 138 Pounds or round about $180. For total flight over 1600 miles long. has only costs me about
eight pence per mile which I didn't think was too bad. Air Astana on exactly the same route from Tbilisi to Almaty via Aktau Will charge well over 300 pounds. So it's clear that Scat
is the cheaper option of getting around Kazakhstan by air. My next problem was how
I was going to get home from here in Almaty. My flight down to
Uzbekistan, had been missed. And there werer no other flights down to Tashkent today. It was time to decide how on earth I was going to get back home to the UK from Almaty. My original flight with Uzbekistan Airways via Tashkent had now been missed. And I was effectively stranded here in Almaty until I could
book another flight. I had a quick look through
the departures board and it seemed that most flights were heading off to Astana. I hope that if I got up to Astana I might be able to find a way home from there back to the UK. Check out my next video to find out how they got home. In the meantime, thanks very much for watching. Let me know what you think of Scat Airways in the
comment section below. Chenqui and see you next time here on inflight video.
Just don’t eat the inflight meal
BTW, "scat" means rays (Batoidea) like manta ray or spotted eagle ray
Well it's a very fitting name.
So brave
But why's the logo look like a failing rectal sphincter?
SCAT Airlines - If we don’t make you shit yourself, we’ll shit on you -
It’s still blacklisted.