Simon Calder: City Breaks

A tale of two flights - each announced this week, each using a chartered Boeing 757, but, I suspect, resulting in very different experiences.

Every winter, Britain's charter airlines face the same problem: how to make use of planes and crews when no one wants to fly anywhere much? All sorts of solutions are tried. Earlier this year, for example, cabin crew for Monarch Airlines found themselves routinely saddled with the arduous task of spending seven days in a luxury hotel in Costa Rica. This was the the happy consequence of Monarch's once-a-week charter to Central America; it was cheaper to leave the crew in San Jose awaiting the next inbound flight than to fly them back to Britain.

Now Air 2000 - which, by the way, has yet to take up any of the suggestions offered by readers of this column to change its time-sensitive name - has announced a neat answer to the winter doldrums. As soon as the summer '98 schedules finish, the airline will rip out the 233 legroom-challenged seats from a Boeing 757 and replace them with just 92 first class armchairs. The plane then embarks on 25-night tour of the East, visiting "lost cities" such as Samarkand and Angkor Wat. The price: pounds 17,469 all in.

If that sounds a tad too expensive, you could try a lengthy journey at the opposite end of the luxury scale. Five weeks from today, the charter airline Canada 3000 begins flights to Australia.

Nothing new in that, of course; Britannia Airways started charters to Australasia a decade ago. Britannia uses a wide-bodied 767, but Canada 3000 will employ a narrow-bodied 757. And while Britannia flies the well- established easterly route, stopping twice on its 25-hour journey from Gatwick to Sydney, Canada 3000 seems intent on a tour of most of the airports in the western hemisphere.

A few hours after taking off from Gatwick, passengers will find themselves touching down to refuel at the NATO base in Keflavik, Iceland. Then, in none-too-quick succession, you visit Vancouver, Honolulu and Fiji. Having lost a day at the International Date Line, you finally reach Sydney about 34 hours after leaving Sussex.

While your befuddled brain tries to work out where you are and what day it is, take comfort from the shock awaiting the big-budget travellers aboard their Air 2000 private jet. In Cambodia, the group will overnight at the comfortable Phnom Penh Sofitel, no doubt looking forward to the following day's excursion to Angkor Wat - one of the undisputed wonders of the East.

When they get the capital's airport, though, they will discover that instead of their luxurious Boeing 757, they are obliged to travel in a Royal Air Cambodge aircraft. When I took this flight, it was aboard a doddery old Antonov; the "bodge" part of the airline's name was explained when the cabin filled with billowing clouds of condensation immediately after take-off. The airline has since replaced its Soviet aircraft with European prop-jets, but I bet the catering hasn't improved enough to live up to the "first class service all the way" tag. All in all, I'd rather fly to Keflavik.