Turkish Airlines

✅ Trip Verified | Chicago to Lagos via Istanbul. If you want to make changes to your flight Turkish Airlines requires you to go into their offices and show your credit card. Imagine how few people would fly Turkish airlines if you had to buy your ticket in person. The nearest office is hours away from me. I bought my ticket with my credit card online - why would I not be able to change it. I find this absurd.

✅ Trip Verified | Stockholm to Istanbul. Fast and friendly check-in agent. Time for a visit to the modest SAS Lounge (being Star Gold status) where there was a selection of light bites and drinks perfectly adequate for a pre-flight snack. Orderly boarding with priority boarding well handled. Inside the aircraft I first noticed the small size of the individual seat-back screens. But obviously airlines can’t just throw them all away when bigger and better ones come along. Hot meal served in flight - with a choice of two entrees and various drinks. Delay landing in Istanbul due to congestion - hopefully a thing of the past when the new airport opens. Bus to the terminal. Long queue for the Biz class immigration desk. To the right of it is a channel serving a continual line of Turkish Airlines crew. I don’t understand why the crew dont use the two adjacent but always empty Beogs electronic immigration gates, hence freeing up a second line for the high revenue fare paying passengers. Even after the queue there was a wait for the luggage to come up. Overall a good flight and thanks to the fare I found online, extremely good value. Even if I didn’t earn many “miles”.

✅ Trip Verified | In Brussels we were informed that the flight had 30 mins delay. In fact we left Brussels more than a full hour late. The flight was denied landing in IST and deviated to Ankara. We missed our connection to Panamà. There was no concern, no information, no help at all for my partner and me and other passengers in similar situation. No excuse for the nuisance caused. Everything we had to find out by ourselves. No compensation was offered, like a drink or coffee or a place to rest. The attitude of staff at the desk was far below standard; e.g. someone asked our names and then left without saying a word and never coming back. Finally we were sent around half of the orbit and spent more than 70 hours in planes and airports - via Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires to Panamà- where we could catch our flight to Cartagena, unfortunately without our luggage, that was missing.

✅ Trip Verified | I fly Turkish on a regular basis in all classes and am a holder of the miles&smiles gold card. This flight from Istanbul to Berlin was full and despite being crammed boarding was quick and the catering on board efficient as always. Although a rather short trip you still have your on board entertainment system which nobody on European schedules has in addition to the meal choice. Knowing quite a few airlines and using them in various cabin classes and routes I can not understand how they can only score 6 out of 10. Reading most of the negative reviews its clear that either some do not know how to book or dont have the knowledge enough to compare to others.

✅ Trip Verified | Ground staff were very rude and shouted at people to force them to check in their luggage, they force you to check in your carry on bag even though the other bag you have is a laptop bag. Very bad service. People will understand the action behind this but this rude attitude is not understandable.

✅ Trip Verified | Odessa to Taipei via Istanbul. We were supposed to fly but it never happened. We are still waiting for our outbound flight from Odessa 3 days after our scheduled trip. The reason was stated as bad weather conditions when our flight TK468 was canceled on the 2nd Feb, 2018. That's understandable since Odessa airport gets fog from week to week. What is not, is the fact our trip was shifted 3 days. And that is totally unacceptable. Nobody offered us a flight with other Star Alliance carrier on the same day (2nd Feb). Nobody tried to facilitate our plans to reach our destination on time or with a slight delay not a 3 day delay. Nobody issued an apology letter and a Flight Cancelation Notice. We had to head back to the Turkish Airlines office to issue one on our personal demand. Totally unacceptable service.

✅ Trip Verified | Flew Turkish from Istanbul to Cairo. Flight was on time and rather uneventful but cabin attendants extremely rude shouting at passengers to board quickly. They were obviously stressed since it was a night flight but this has happened so often on TR flights. Good planes, decent food but incredibly rude cabin and ground staff. They lost last year the title of Europe's best carrier to Lufthansa which shows why. Customer service at Turkish Airways is very poor compared to other airlines.

✅ Trip Verified | Cape Town to London via Istanbul. It’s a shame that Turkish Airlines use the Bidvest lounge at CPT because it’s one of those pay-to-enter places that’s stuffed with passengers gorging themselves with food. Boarding for the CPT – IST flight started an hour before take-off, which seemed excessive. The business class cabin has a utilitarian décor of shades of grey – no middle-eastern bling or graduated, coloured lighting here. The staggered 2:2:2 seating pattern affords reasonable privacy, although passengers in window seats still have to climb over their neighbour’s legs. Cabin crew use a counter at the front of the cabin to prepare the food and drink service; it’s probably best for that to be done behind the scenes. It was good to have WiFi, even if it was rather slow. The Bentley night bag, Denon noise-cancelling headphones and large-screen IFE with a touch-screen remote were impressive. So, too, was the separate menu card for ordering breakfast in advance. The food service got off to a flying start with LED candles, laying out one’s tray and then the starter options where wheeled past. In principle, one could have as much as one wanted. The meze and mushroom soup were delicious. Less good were the main courses, which were, curiously, both overcooked and barely warm. A trolley of desserts and a cheese plate restored one’s faith in the presence of the on-board chef. Wines were largely Turkish, but the cabin crew seemed clueless about them. The cabin crew in general were efficient but somewhat robotic. Announcements from the cockpit lacked the friendliness of British Airways pilots. Sleep was hindered by the over-hot cabin temperature and being woken three hours before landing for the breakfast service – at 3 a.m. But at least breakfast was a cut above the usual and a feta omelette was actually pleasant. Landing was on time and we were bussed separately to the terminal. The double-level Turkish Airlines CIP lounge is vast, offering 24/7 service, unbelievable square meterage and questionable activities to pass the time. I suspect that if anyone started playing the piano on the dais they’d be asked to desist in case it put the indoor golfers off their stroke. Frankly, it was all too much. For the second leg of IST – LHR, we were on a 777-300 with a 2:3:2 configuration in business class. Thankfully the cabin was less than a third full, so we opted out of a second breakfast and caught up with some sleep. Again, the luxury of a flat bed on a short-haul flight takes some beating. Overall, two good flights with an above average business class product but let down by the necessity of transit at IST at inconvenient times of the day.

✅ Trip Verified | Flew from Stockholm to Tbilisi and back via Istanbul. Generally a very satisfying on-board experience with professional and notably friendly staff, good food (2 choices on a 3 hour intra-European flight is impressive) and a varied drink selection, comfortable seats. The ground experiences were less pleasant and included crowding at the gates, very annoying bus transfers from and to the plane at Istanbul Atatürk airport (hope this will become better when the new airport opens) and chaotic transit security at IST (which missed my filled water bottle. very concerning).

✅ Trip Verified | At half the price for a return trip from Heathrow to Cape Town with other airlines, Turkish Airlines' business class offering was too tempting to pass by, even if there was the inconvenience of transiting via Istanbul Take-off for LHR to IST was delayed by an hour, which was a concern given that we had just 1 hr 40 minutes between the scheduled landing and take-off for the IST-CPT leg. Having the full flat-bed experience for a short-haul flight was a real luxury and Turkish Airlines win hands down for providing this. Food on board was adequate and of the standard that BA now provide in Club Europe. Wheeling a trolley around loaded with foil-topped main courses didn't seem the best way of using the sky chef on board. Landing at IST was delayed by congestion and we'd almost given up on making the next flight. Getting to the terminal was helped by the airline providing a separate bus for business class. Details of gates for transit passengers was helpfully provided on board. IST is unbelievably chaotic, even at 1:00 am, but staff were around to direct passengers, and it was then just a matter of a frantic dash to the gate. Amazingly, we arrived just in time for boarding, but there was then another wait for the bus to fill to take us to a far stand. The food service on the IST-CPT leg was astonishingly good, and the role of sky chef was much more in evidence, with individual plating up of all the courses and a trolley circulated with desserts. A breakfast menu was also offered just after boarding, which allowed us to choose as much or as little as we wanted. Even the scrambled eggs were good! Disembarkation at CPT was quick, immigration was a breeze and we collected our bags just 10 minutes after landing. Overall, we were impressed and we're actually looking forward to our return flights.