Originally Posted by
Wuxia
My final destination is Hamburg. There are four to five IST-HAM flights a day. Most long-haul flights are only one or two a day. If they reschedule my long-haul flights, all I want for TK to consider is just to get on a flight so that the wait is not insanely long. I know it is not TK's fault.
With most airlines, I'd say that you might wait until you get to the airport and then simply go to the ticket counter or gate agent and nicely request to get a seat on an earlier flight. If there are seats available, they will likely do it. They might charge a change fee, they might not, depending on how good a mood they're in.
BUT... this is IST and TK and the ground staff are, well, special. If it were me, I'd suggest either just waiting it out, or paying the change fee to rebook an earlier flight before you leave.
Anyway, sounds like it's all hypothetical right now, since as I understand it, you're only guessing that your outbound flight might be cancelled. If it hasn't happened yet, maybe wait and see if it does, and if so, see what they change it to? It might end up being no problem at all.
In all cases, if you gamble on booking separate tickets, always make sure to leave a minimum connection time for "missed connections" as specified by your insurance policy. Mine is 4 hours; yours might be around that too but read the fine print. If the connection is less than that and your first flight is late and you miss your connection, you'll have no recourse for the second flight. Always better to err on the side of too much time rather than too little if you're gambling with a separately booked ticket.