Well, I am sure that some of you (despite the fact this is flyertalk here, so everybody is used to weird routings…) will be wondering why I went to Saudi Arabia from the Netherlands and then almost immediately after to Norway to then go to Australia. I would certainly agree that this is not the most direct line you could draw between Maastricht and Sydney. Well… most of the trip I will describe below (so pretty much everything besides the Saudi Arabia trip) was booked as vacation 3 months ago during the Qatar Airways annual travel festival. I was happy to score a great deal out of Scandinavia (the usual suspect for the cheap business class fares) to Australia (first time there for me) and then returning from Japan, a country that I love visiting. The total for this double open-jaw costed a bit less than 1500 Euros round trip (Inclusive of 1 hotel night in Doha in a 5-star hotel) to which I added two segments between Sydney to Tokyo on China Airlines using Flying blue miles (100000 miles + 74 Euros taxes). Add to this a round trip on Qantas using 18000 BA avios + 22 Euros between Sydney and Melbourne and a couple of positioning flights on KLM from Brussels (so I can get 4 segments in total eh ! ) and the vacation was pretty much planned ! Indeed, besides the good fares I wanted to experience again – or try for the first time – some specific aircrafts, cabins and airports, which included QR Airbus 380-800 with the onboard lounge, QR and CI Airbus 350-900, and some Qantas long-haul configured aircrafts on the Australian domestic routes. So everything got booked a while ago. Until 10 days before my departure, I thought this was the plan...
(Un-)fortunately, my boss came to me at the last minute to ask me if I wanted to visit some of our colleagues in Jeddah during a workshop… which happened a few days before my vacation ! After a few hesitations, I applied for the visa and went there for 2 days, enjoying at the same time a status match with Turkish airlines to Gold status and experience on a new airline ! (I lost my Lufthansa Senator status a couple years ago, so I have been avoiding Star Alliance airlines nowadays).
And indeed, besides my passion for travel, I also arranged this trip to renew my BA Gold status, thanks to the generous business class tier points credit of this program.
So, in a nutshell, I went in 5 days only from rain and 5 degC, to sun and 30 degC, to snow and -15 degC to sun again at 38 degC ! Now writing those lines from the short SYD-MEL flight, I am surprised how come I did not get sick yet
After a 2 hour and half after my departure from the south of the Netherlands, I arrived on a misty Sunday afternoon at Schiphol airport to check-in for my first Turkish airlines flight to Istanbul, continuing to Jeddah.
Before I start reporting this first flight, I mentioned earlier that I benefited from a status match from TK. I have to say that I was positively impressed on how this entire process went through. It basically took only a couple emails and 24 hours to have the status match processed and I even received the welcome kit by post, containing the gold card, only a week later. Turkish airlines offers a generous status match to elite cardholders from Skyteam (Elite plus) and Oneworld (Emeralds only I think) and a few other airlines like Etihad, Emirates and El Al. The status match is granted for a period of 4 months and if you fly once, in any cabin, on an international TK operated flight within this period, your status gets extended of one more year. If you fly 15000 status miles with TK within the first year, your gold status gets extended for one additional year, bringing the Star Alliance Gold status to two years in total. This elite status on TK is also one of the easiest to keep, especially if you reside out of Turkey : only 25000 status miles per year, or 37500 status miles in 2 years. That includes status miles earned on other star alliance partners. So this was a pretty good deal as I was having the opportunity to fly for work to one of the TK destinations in the immediate future.
A round trip to Jeddah, from Amsterdam, was therefore booked (with the help of our department secretary, who now understands my passion for travelling ), in business class, and as I was only staying 2 days there, it costed a whooping 2200 Euros… I choose to depart from AMS rather than BRU or DUS as TK was operating Airbus 330-300 on the AMS-IST segment, featuring the long-haul business class seat, while BRU and DUS were operated on Airbus 321 at the times I was interested.
After booking with our company travel agent, I was able to log in on the TK website but unable to change my assigned seat, until online check-in opened 24 hours before departure, leaving a lesser choice of seats available. During OLCI, I was able to select seats for both segments, but could issue boarding passes only for the first leg as passport and visa check had to be performed at the airport to get the boarding pass to Jeddah.
I arrived in Schiphol by train and there was a bit of a crowd at the check-in counters. A couple desks were opened for Business class and Star Gold passengers. It took about 5 minutes to have both boarding passes issued, but I did not have any luggage to check-in.
TK Check-in area AMS
TK Check-in desks AMS
I then proceeded to the priority lane for security control were I was escorted by an agent at the front of the line (first time this happens in Schiphol – that was nice !)
TK uses the Aspire lounge in Amsterdam. It is the same lounge as QR uses. I went there and reported this lounge before on one of my previous trip reports
Week-end in Japan ! - AMS-DOH-HND/NRT-DOH-AMS (QR J 773/772/787) + HND-CTS (JL F 772)
and was certainly not impressed. I instead grabbed a snack from Jamie Oliver’s and then went to the lounge just to get a seat and WiFi. The lounge was less crowded than during my previous visit, and offered nice tarmac views. Here below are a few pictures of it.
Jamie Oliver's sandwich with tarmac view in AMS
Aspire lounge AMS (Non-Schengen area)
Views from Aspire lounge AMS (Non-Schengen area)
The flight from IST arrived earlier than scheduled and I decided to go to the gate an hour before expected departure. Boarding started very shortly after, with a separate boarding lane for Elite and Business class passengers.
TK Airbus 330-300 at AMS
TK boarding gate at AMS
TK boarding gate at AMS
My plane for IST