Turkish Airlines

Following the expansion of the THY lounge at Istanbul Ataturk it is no longer overcrowded. It has an impressive selection of freshly made foods and pastries but also services such as cinema and massage. The atmosphere is nice and quiet (no boarding calls) and the lounge is light with plenty of windows and lighting to make it comfortable.

I visited twice in the last week and both times it was "full". The design is quite interesting but in trying to accommodate so many people it is not a relaxing place to be. The staff were working hard but it is not easy with so many people.

I used this lounge twice flying from BRU to BKK and back. A catastrophic visit in both cases totally overcrowded almost no seat to find very noisy and really unacceptable!

This is one of the best lounges regarding food and beverages choice activities (eg. a theater where you can watch movies or concerts billiard piano). Lounge team work in rush hours to avoid problems.

Very neat design very large with lots of seating areas many food stations. A real treat on a long layover traveling from Houston via Istanbul onto Dushanbe. This has to be one of the top airline lounges.

In theory the lounge is quite nice but at peak periods you should not even bother going to the lounge. It is normally full to overflowing staff will not offer any assistance to find seats etc. The washrooms and shower facilities are quite poor and badly maintained. Good snack and other foods if you can find anywhewre to sit. Staff service is good for the catering type staff but Turkish Airlines staff are rude and well below standard.

After a quite long walk over the airport you find a big lounge. There are lockers where you can store your bags a small cinema kids-area several coffee and tea-bars a grill where you can get sandwiches bbqued chicken and beef soups cheese salads pasta and desserts. Food quantity is impressive all offers taste good some very good. Internet stations are available and free wifi. The shower rooms are clean and nicely designed.

The literature states that this place has a capacity for 331 people. There must be at least twice that many here. No seats no food no power sockets. This cannot be called 'business' as it is impossible to do any. All I wanted in my three hour stop over was to charge my laptop send some emails and have something to eat. Impossible. Never using Turkish again to fly on business travel. In summary - overcrowded noisy access to basic facilities that the business traveller needs non-existent and a surly overworked team of staff.

Huge sprawling open-plan lounge rammed full of people with a very random and disorganised lay-out. Also not one real quiet area with groups of people sitting around shouting people listening to iPads laptops on speaker - just very chaotic and not a nice place to wait for a flight.

I travel frequently from IST but typically don't use Turkish Airlines for business so this was my first time in the new lounge. I didn't use the showers nor many of the other amenities but the one's I tried to take advantage of didn't instil confidence. I wasn't impressed with the lounge: I thought they might be having an "off" day so I asked to speak to someone in charge. It took nearly a half an hour to find someone. the excuse for not having an available manager in the lounge was that it wasn't a busy time of the day despite it being 3:30 in the afternoon on a Friday and packed. It was far too busy and loud. If indeed the mornings are busier I would hate to see it. After sorting through the piles of newspapers that seemed to be tossed haphazardly on the tables - they don't use magazine racks - I found that there were no English newspapers in the lounge. According to the lounge manager they "have them but they typically run out in the morning". Knowing that the idea of having some more for the afternoon passengers hadn't occurred to her. Food quality seemed good but accessing catering was very chaotic. For example there are two chefs working in tandem; rather than create a staggered system where some food is constantly coming out of the oven the two of them prepare food together load the ovens together then stand around until they take everything out then start the process again. Of course by the time each batch is ready there is a hoard of people are lined up and instantly they run out until another batch is made. Lockers were an excellent touch and the library was nice though I think that it's more for show than actual use in that it is as exposed and equally noisy as everywhere else in the lounge. A lot of people seemed to be highly irritated with the service on the day I was there and although each one of us seemed to be complaining about smallish problems I got the overall sense that things were simply not up to standard.