Travel 6/8/2009, Czech Republic: Pre-Czech Flight

Sky Europe is an Eastern European budget airline which somehow makes it sound like it should be dodgier and less safe than Ryanair, but it isn't.

It's the way the world's going. In the old days, if you had a plumbing job, you'd get in the very friendly Mr O'Leary, the Irish plumber to do it. But after a while you got sick of the cut corners, mysterious surcharges and endless delays; and nowadays everyone has an Eastern European plumber. Budget airlines are going the same way.

Being a budget airline, Sky Europe flights leave from the distant, isolated cheap zone at Schiphol rather than the main terminal. Here there is one duty-free shop and one "grab-and-fly" (snack kiosk), that's it. And of course, the flight was delayed for some reason. I'm not sure if we ever really found out why, but it must have been drastic as the plane we eventually got wasn't even a Sky Europe plane.

The flight to Prague was quick and painless. We landed late at the airport, but had counted on this: We had one night booked at a hotel 2 minutes walk from the main terminal. We only had to dodge one police armoured car to get there. It's possibly just there to give tourists a taste of the iron-curtain days.

But anyway, we strode past the mobile monument to state oppression and checked in to our modern slab of business luxury. The hotel was anything but iron curtain being a brand, spanking new Marriott.