Turkish Airlines A330-300 Economy Class IST-JNB
As our flight was only at 00h55, we basically had a whole evening to enjoy ourselves in Istanbul. Our timing for this holiday was fantastic, as the rain had started to arrive for the first time on our holiday.
We settled in at a nice little restaurant on the sidewalk and asked to experience their Testi Kebab, a meal for two made in a ceramic pot. It was an interesting and tasty experience.
Some lentil soup to start
And then the display...
After a slow meander back to the hotel we left for the airport at 22:00. After arriving at 22:45 I was shocked at how busy the airport was. It reminded me of Dubai - with hundreds of people catching international flights. What a fiasco. After passing through their extensive security, we went to check in.
Unfortunately Turkish Airlines had taken the liberty to fragment our family, which caused us to have a huge fight with them. They were very indifferent to our complaints and blamed us for being the last people to check-in. What is the point of phoning a month before to book our seats??? A very poor image of the airline indeed!
After checking in, we went to sit by the gate and managed to negotiate marginally better seats in the plane with the gate staff. Instead of all of us sitting alone, we managed to sit in pairs in various areas of the plane. This was not at all like the three rows of window seats I booked a month prior to the flight.
Boarding was smooth but the weather was dire.
Although we were primed to be grumpy after our seat experience, the flight really was unenjoyable. The Captain came over the loudspeaker and said "have a nice flight"... thanks for all the info...
We taxied to the runway and experienced the most appalling congestion. After waiting for 30 minutes in the same place, the Captain said "Ataturk has a lot of congestion tonight, we are number 6 in line". Yikes!
... We finally took off after 70 minutes on the runway... that's a new personal record for me.
Of course, the fun didn't end there as we took off into thick clouds... I couldn't see the wing for a full 30 minutes and was shocked to see that we were still in thick clouds even at 30,000 feet. Finally we broke through and settled at 36,000 feet but the moderate turbulence continued for another hour before everything settled.
Amenity kit
The crew then performed one of their nasty tactics on red eyes and delayed the drinks service for a full two hours. By that time I grabbed a coke, downed it and fell asleep and didn't even care about dinner. Dinner at 04h00? Yeah right.
After waking up at 08:00, I indulged in a delicious breakfast before the plane landed at 09:45.
It was then time to complete an
Ebola Questionnaire to make sure no unwanted germs enter our country.
After a smooth touchdown we headed to our parking bay at the end of this unremarkable flight, but a great holiday.
Thank you for reading my Trip Report
