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Adamos Marneros, captain of the last Cyprus Airways plane that landed at Nicosia International Airport on July 20, 1974, photographed at the derelict airport. [Andros Efstathiou]<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
On Friday July 19, 1974, 30-year-old pilot Adamos Marneros was glued to his television screen in London. The British networks, first and foremost the BBC, were constantly relaying information about an imminent Turkish invasion of Cyprus, just four days after the Greek military junta-backed coup against Cypriot President, Archbishop Makarios III.<\/p>\n
The young pilot paces the room nervously. He is not only worried about his family, his home, his homeland. In the evening of the same day, he is scheduled to pilot a Cyprus Airways flight from London to Nicosia with an intermediate stop in Rome. Nicosia International Airport, which had been closed after the Greek military coup, had reopened after strong pressure from foreign diplomatic authorities on Athens\u2019 chosen representative and militant Nikos Sampson to evacuate foreign nationals from the island in view of \u201cdevelopments.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was to be one of the least profitable routes in the history of Cyprus Airways: just seven passengers registered from London (a family of four Greek Cypriots and a family of three Turkish Cypriots) and none from Rome. But Rome was useful to Marneros who did not want to risk a landing in Cyprus at the time of a possible Turkish invasion. \u201cIn Rome I could invoke some technical problem so that we don\u2019t have to fly to Cyprus that night and gain some time,\u201d he tells Kathimerini.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the Italians did not do him the favor and gave him the green light to continue his journey to Nicosia. There were two main reasons that made him insist that they were taking an unnecessary risk: the first was the lives of the passengers and crew (two co-pilots and three flight attendants) and, second, the fact that the aircraft was the only one of the tiny fleet of Cyprus Airways (only four planes) which was outside the country and in the event of a major war incident could be saved for the future. However, flight CY317 would continue as planned to its final destination. The young pilot had contacted the airlines\u2019 general manager twice to convince him to abort the flight, to no avail.<\/p>\n
The thriller begins half an hour after midnight, well into Saturday, July 20th, a date that, unfortunately, was going to go down in history. The dark sky of Rome did not portend anything good. The flight would take 3.5 excruciating hours. When the plane reached Athens, Marneros contacted the control tower of Hellenic International Airport to ask if there was any news from Cyprus. He didn\u2019t know what answer he wished for, he says. But the answer was \u201cno.\u201d He then sought a free frequency for direct communication with Nicosia without result, but the cockpit received information that the Cypriot capital\u2019s international airport had been seized by fighters of EOKA II, the armed, paramilitary, nationalist organization of Greek Cypriots with a leading role in the Greek military coup.<\/p>\n Marneros remembers the loneliness of that night. \u201cNobody was flying in the area that night, both because of the events and the time of night. Everything looked so quiet, but after Rhodes, turning south for Cyprus, I pointed the aircraft\u2019s radars towards the Turkish coast, just in case. And then the radar detected a large dot outside Antalya and three smaller ones with a clear direction towards Cyprus. I immediately informed the control tower in Nicosia, but they told me to continue as normal. Off the coast of Paphos the radar caught six more large dots that I had never noticed before. I asked the control tower to stay at 15,000 feet and do a lap of Cyprus. They gave me the OK and I continued not to believe what I saw on the radar: on the turn to Kyrenia I noticed ships next to each other on the coast of Agios Georgios, exactly where the landing took place, and six more from Mersin heading towards our shores, and in the area of Famagusta we came across one huge dot and two smaller ones. By then I was terrified. My island, my homeland was surrounded by 21 Turkish ships, that\u2019s how many I had roughly counted. I still didn\u2019t know that the ships in Paphos belonged to the American fleet and in Famagusta there was the British aircraft carrier [HMS] Hermes for the gathering of 1,500 of their compatriots. But everything else was Turkish,\u201d he tells Kathimerini.<\/p>\n However, everything was jotted down by Marneros on a map that was handed over to the Cypriot police immediately after landing in Nicosia. He also told them to notify the military administration of Kyrenia immediately, but he received assurances from everyone that everything is under control. At that point, he had run out of options. He landed the aircraft at 4.10 a.m. safely and everyone, crew and passengers, got into cars and disappeared into the night. They must have been the only ones outside on the island at such a time.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as I got into my car I heard a loud and strange noise. The dawn was breaking. I shut off the engine to hear better and I was shocked to see over the runway, just where I had landed our plane a mere 50 minutes ago, 10 to 12 Turkish F-104 Starfighters fly by and dozens of paratroopers flooding the horizon. After the shock, I started thinking about what I should do: should I stay or should I leave. I decided to leave. My house was 20 minutes away, I would risk it. The F-104s started bombing and one bomb fell very close to me, but luckily it didn\u2019t explode,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n One of the first employees of Cyprus Airways, the flight attendant Simos Asimakis, photographed in the uniform he wore at work, before the Turkish invasion. [Andros Efstathiou]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n He arrived in the center of Nicosia safe and sound. Did he ever find out what happened to the plane he flew with? \u201cSome of our people moved it to the center of the runway after landing to prevent the Turkish planes from landing. But the Turks did not need Nicosia\u2019s airport. They did their job and then returned to Turkey resupply. They finally bombed it two hours later and today pieces of it are still there.\u201d<\/p>\n Fifty years later, what does he think of that terrible dawn of July 20, 1974? \u201cI am thinking that if we were even an hour late, I don\u2019t know where we\u2019d be today,\u201dthe former pilot says.<\/p>\n Cypriot photographer Andros Efstathiou was born in the year of the Turkish invasion. He has no memories of the traumatic event, his family were not refugees. He still wonders what drove him to dedicate five years of his life to the project of photographing the last flight at the derelict Nicosia International Airport, which is under the jurisdiction of the UN and falls within the boundaries of the buffer zone. The story goes back to 2006, when Efstathiou was asked to photograph cross-community talks in airport outbuildings.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I love modernism a lot, I fell in love with the building and from 2007 I started photographing it secretly, since it was strictly forbidden to enter. I took advantage of the fact that the guards recognized me and I sneaked in without anyone noticing. It was a little weird and quite risky, but I was determined,\u201d he tells Kathimerini. \u201cIn the fourth year I ran into a former Cyprus Airways flight attendant from the pre-invasion era. I was elated. I asked him if he could find any of his colleagues from those years. Eventually enough people were located and that is how I found both the captain and the flight attendant of the last flight. The amazing thing is that everyone kept their uniforms. I asked for official permission to photograph them in and outside of the airport. They only gave me [permission for] one day, so a series of photographs emerged with the building itself but also the old airline employees who worked until the last day of the airport\u2019s operation as protagonists.\u201d<\/p>\n The photographic project has appeared in several exhibitions both in Cyprus and abroad. Part of it has been bought by the Museum of Photography of Thessaloniki and in December it will be presented at the Nicosia gallery isnotgallery, as part of anniversary to mark the 50 years since the Turkish invasion.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"watching-the-turkish-invasion-from-a-plane0\"](\"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/woman.jpg?1732024026894\")
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Photographing the desolate airport<\/h3>\n