Having landed very early in Istanbul, we avoided the peak early morning arrival wave of flights which landed after us. Already, the arrival hall was rather busy with greeters at this hour.
Took a short walk over to the connecting domestic terminal to catch our next flight to Izmir. Expecting a very deserted terminal prior to 6am in the morning, what greeted us was a very bustling and crowded terminal instead! Check-in counters were packed and security lines were long! Domestic flights starts really early in Istanbul!
In order to escape the hustle and bustle, we cleared security and proceeded to the Primeclass Lounge, compliments of our Priority Pass cards. This is just a small and quiet lounge, offering not much facilities except food, beverages and some sofa seats. Well, being a domestic terminal, guess most people would not stay too long in the lounge.
Some of the breakfast offerings in the lounge. The selection was enough to fill our stomachs while waiting for our 8am departure.
There was also access to an open-air terrace where some plane-spotting could be done. However, being a domestic terminal, most of the planes were just TK, TK and more TK.
Left the lounge at about 0715am when the FIDS was showing "Go to Gate" for our flight. At this time, the terminal had quietened down very significantly.
How many TK aircraft did u see? I counted 19 just in this shot alone.
Our flight was scheduled to be on an A340 again, though I was secretly hoping that we would be swapped onto a newer A330 or 77W so that I could have a chance to experience TK's newest economy product. On the other hand, I was also expecting that there was a probability we could get the exact same aircraft that we flew on into Istanbul just 3hrs ago. As there were no gates for widebodies at the domestic terminal, our flight naturally boarded from a bus gate on the 1st level. Judging from the crowd at the gate, the flight seemed to be rather full.
