Turkish Airlines

✅ Trip Verified | Sofia to San Francisco via Istanbul. I booked this flight back in March for my parent's first visit to US. I was beyond excited I have found such a convenient flight that will fly them to US. Today, I received 10 texts from Turkish airlines my flight has been changed. When I went to look up the option, duration of one way was about 24 hours. I am extremely disappointed, because my travel agent is trying to get a hold of the Turkish Airlines and they can't . Now, I am waiting to see if I would be able to get another fight company. Words cannot describe my anger and frustration and of course huge loss of money. This is totally unprofessional and unacceptable. Very disappointing, no one seems to care from customer service. Extremely bad English and bad communication over the phone.

✅ Trip Verified | Rome to Doha via Istanbul. I was in my return journey. Airline gave me a seat separate from my family seating. When I approach Rome checkin, they informed that your seat will be corrected at Istanbul. But in Istanbul, no body available to respond. Flight attendant was not interested to help. At last my wife was travelling with 1 kid and 1 infant from Istanbul to Doha with crying infant for 4 hours. Worst airline I have travelled.

Not Verified | Istanbul to Mombasa with Turkish Airlines. The flight in Business takes more than 7 hours. The wide seats have a backrest recline of about 5 cm, no usable legrest. This seat model is about 40 years old. The most uncomfortable business seat for such a long flight of all airlines I used. Same seats on 5 hours flight Istanbul - Addis Ababa. Avoid by all means.

✅ Trip Verified | I had a round trip from Salt Lake City to Istanbul via New York in August 2018 returning September 2018. My return ticket was cancelled due to a hurricane and I tried getting my money back starting early September 2018 and got the runaround. Terrible customer service. One office said I can fly without any charges on the cancelled ticket within a year but it was all a lie. I requested a credit on new tickets I wanted to buy for 2019 but they refused to work with me.

✅ Trip Verified | Warsaw to Taipei via Istanbul. In-flight experience is average. Nothing more or less than expected in economy. Appreciate the 3-3-3 layout in economy on the B777, meaning marginally more room than the traditional 3-4-3 on some airlines B777. Customer service is absolutely terrible. Baggage arrived 48 hours delayed and damaged. Applied for compensation with Turkish baggage irregularity department. Was requested to upload numerous documents: passport, boarding pass, picture of damage, receipts of necessary expenses due to delay. The “Claims department” then updates my file requesting an invoice for luggage repair. I provide this - have never heard from them since. Multiple follow up messages have been left unanswered with no response to the invoice they asked for. Two weeks have passed and no response. Seems Turkish customer support is run by a bunch of amateurs. Will be flying Emirates or Lufthansa for my next Europe-Asia routes. Emirates was able to proactively house me one night in a hotel in Dubai due to a weather related cancellation and provided hot meals and shuttle buses until the next day’s replacement flight...and Turkish Airlines can’t even get a baggage damage claim sorted. Go figure! Stay away from Turkish Airlines!

Not Verified | Singapore to Catania via Istanbul. I wish I could give this airline and their airport staff a zero-rating. Horrible experience. Plane was late and I missed my connection. At the airport, I had to struggle for hours before they agreed to put me on another flight. Airport staff was unable to communicate in English and was extremely rude. They repeatedly threatened customers protesting at the counter to call the police. I reached my final destination 12 hours after my scheduled arrival. To top this all, Turkish refused to refund my flight or grant any kind of compensation, as "they are not part of the EU" so they're not bound to EU rules. Outrageous. Never more with Turkish.

✅ Trip Verified | Los Angeles to Samara via Istanbul. My final destination was Kazakhstan via Istanbul Turkey and Samara Russia. My wife and I do not need a visa to enter Russia; however, we found out in an airport before checking in that our new born baby need a visa to enter Russia even if it is transit. Its our mistake that US passport holder needs a visa to enter Russia even if short transit. You can not image how frustrate in this situation when you are ready flight with a new born baby. Los Angeles ground staff felt sorry for us and tried to solve this issue and even called Russia consulate in Samara to see any other options for this case; unfortunately, there was no options to enter Russia without a visa with U.S. passport holder. They said "sorry to us so many times; but, at the same time, they keep looking for any other options". Eventually, I decided to purchase new ticket to go Kazakhstan without transit via Russia; however, a staff explain that if we miss or give up one of five flights, (there is five flights on our itinerary), rest of flights will be canceled as per an airline policy. so we have to flight to Russia in order not to lose all flights. so I called Expedia to see what is our option for this case. As I expected, we have to purchase entire new tickets which is $8,500. Expedia said that is only option since that is an airline policy. I thought Turkish airline is the only one can solve this issue even if I purchased tickets via Expedia. So I started to convince them we will take all responsibilities even if we lose tickets. told me "just let us fly to Kazakhstan then I will purchase new ticket to fly there without entering Russia and please just remove our name from the list of flight from Istanbul to Samara Russia". Finally, they helped us to fly to Istanbul and then Almaty Kazakhstan without lose tickets. Once we arrived at Kazakhstan, we were able to apply Russia Transit visa for our baby so we can fly to Istanbul via Samara Russia to return to U.S. I felt that these staff in Los Angeles mind was that they want to help customers and take time to try to solve the issue even if they were doing against their policy.

✅ Trip Verified | London Gatwick to Istanbul via Dubai. My daughter's birthday was on the day we flew out from London Gatwick and I phoned them in advance to let them know this. They informed me to sign up to their 'Miles & Miles' membership so that they can provide a cake to my daughter in the plane. I did what was asked for but no cake or anything special. The aircraft was small from London to Istanbul, however the aircraft from Istanbul to Dubai was slightly bigger. I would have thought they would had bigger and better planes as London is a more international city but I was wrong. The customer service from stewards was poor. They did not smile and the level of English was inadequate as they could not answer basic questions i.e do you herbal tea. Equally, the food was terrible and tasteless. We were given something like toast. They should stick to traditional food like bulgar with kofta or shawarma. This would have been better. On the plus side. Entertainment system was good and had good choice of movies etc including Turkish TV series 'Ertugrul'. On the way back to London my daughter's TV entertainment system did not work which was disappointing. Economy class seats were okay but nothing that special. Long way for Turkish airlines to go before they become an international class carrier. Would not fly again nor recommend it to anyone.

✅ Trip Verified | Istanbul to Boston. Our worst travel experience with Turkish Airline ever. We flew along with 2 kids(3 & 6 year old ) and had a food allergy. Individual Seat assignments: Our seats were confirmed 25D,E,F,G but they re-assigned seats for all of us separately(30D, 24B, 19J, fourth boarding pass got missing in chaos but it was a separate seat) . We are having a hard time understanding how a 3 year old child can travel unaccompanied? When we asked for the reason, they did not have an explanation. We stood on the airplane gate for half an hour when finally they assigned, separately, two seats for mom and daughter together and two seats for dad and son together just before take off (gate was closed and we were literally standing on the gate whole time during boarding process). These seats were not even anywhere close together (Row 27 for mom and daughter and row 9 for dad and son). When I asked how this could happen when I had called and already had confirmed seats, the guy at the gate (part of cabin crew) was extremely rude and replied very rudely that he doesn’t know what happened but he is trying to help us find a seat. Apparently he did not think anything of letting a 3 year old and a 6 year old sit together. The two female flight attendants were a bit nicer and they said to him in Turkish that a child cannot sit alone (they were speaking in Turkish but I could tell that’s what they said because they pointed to my kids). Staff is so unprofessional and rude. When we checked in, we simply asked reason for not assigning seats together (please note that I had called the airline and made sure that we have seats together), the person on the desk was rude and was not replying to our questions. He simply gave the reason, in broken English, that the plane has changed that caused the problem when we asked why it was taking so long to check us in and if everything was ok. However, plane was not changed and he simply lied to us. Poor communication skills: The big problem was, they don’t understand/speak English well. When we asked reason why they assigned our confirmed seats to someone else, the person on the check-in counter could not explain in English and he got frustrated as he as was trying to explain in broken English which was hard for us to understand. In his frustration, he stated showing his rudeness. The same situation was on the plane, whey they were trying to get seats for us, we asked crew members how did this happen? they simply could not reply in English and ultimately replied with rudeness, again it was language problem but I feel that the females were nicer than the man at the door of the plane, who was part of the cabin crew. The other guy was polite and ok who was serving me food but the guy at the door (part of the cabin crew) was extremely rude). He was the one we asked how this could happen when our flight was confirmed and he responded rudely. We asked if at least two of us could sit together behind each other (2 seats in front and 2 in back) and he said yes and told mom and daughter to follow him (all the way to row 27), yet dad and son were told to wait there and were given seats in row 9. Mom was waiting for dad and son to show up close to mom and daughter, but that did not happen. Dad in row 9, had to call a flight attendant and ask where mom and daughter were. He was then led to our seat all the way in the back of the plane to show us where we were.

✅ Trip Verified | On the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Turkey and on the return flight, the air conditioning was very cold, super uncomfortable cold. My wife and I both returned home with flu like symptoms, I received anti biotics for a chest infection from the long flight under such cold conditions. I was wearing suitable long pants, long sleeve shirt, jumper yet still felt cold with the airline blanket on. My wife used two blankets and still was cold the entire flight. I've flown many long haul flights with other airlines and never has the cabin temp been so so cold.