With six hours to kill before my flight to Istanbul, I thought about ringing my London friends for dinner. But they live near Stansted, and I would feel bad if they schlepped across to town with an infant in tow during the peak of rush hour just for a quick dinner. Plan B was to book a £65 room at the Hyatt Place London Heathrow so I could rest a bit, maybe workout in at the gym, and get another night toward Globalist requalification at a reasonable price. The flaw with plan B was that the hotel was a decent haul away from the airport, and the bus schedule would only give me around an hour at the hotel. So onto Plan C, which was to find some way to kill time at the airport.
While I was playing around with the Priority Pass app, I noticed there was a Plaza Premium Lounge in the arrivals area of Terminal 2, which both Singapore and Turkish Airlines use, that seemed to have private resting rooms. I went to inquire about the room after I cleared customs. They did indeed have rooms at a somewhat hefty cost. For my three hour stay, I was quoted a price around $100. But the convenience couldn’t be beat, so I forked over my credit card and bit bullet. The attendant led me to one of the rooms right behind the reception desk. While small, the room was clean, quiet, and comfortable.
There was a small bathroom with a shower attached as well.
After a shower and power nap, I was ready to go. And go I did to the massive line for the shared Star Alliance check in counters right above the lounge. While I certainly appreciate the improved efficiencies the shared check in counters provide for the for the airlines, it is terrible experience for customers traveling at peak hours. Maybe it would help if I had some sort of elite status. Oh wait, I do! Thanks to my Marriot Platinum Elite status, I am a proud United Airlines Premier Silver status holder, which bestows Star Alliance Silver status. Per Star Alliance’s website, “Silver Status recognizes that you have shown a good degree of loyalty to Star Alliance member airlines and earns you two privileges that can make your journey smoother.” Oh man! Two privileges! WOW! How unbelievably generous of them! So… what are these two privileges?
Star Alliance Silver status holders “enjoy the first benefits of Star Alliance loyalty”, which consist of:
- Priority reservation waitlist. *
- Priority standby.
*Not applicable to award tickets.
Not even flipping priority check in. As a point of comparison, even holders of
oneworld’s lowest status rung, Ruby, are allowed to access Business Class check in.
TL;DR – Star Alliance Silver is completely worthless.
It was a solid hour before I was able to check in and get my boarding passes. Of course, I could have avoided all of this by checking in online. But Turkish’s website threw a fit and error’ed out each time I tried for whatever reason. Anyways from there, it was off to the massive line at immigration then the massive line at security. By the time I managed to make it airside, I had just enough time to grab a drink at the surprisingly nice airside Plaza Premium Lounge before heading to the gate just down the hall.
It’s hard to get excited about flying economy class on a flight equivalent to a short midcon redeye back home, especially after just stepping off a flight aboard Singapore Airlines Suites Class. Believe it or not, I was actually quite excited for the next couple of flights. For starters, these two flights on Turkish Airlines kicked off a series of flights on four new airlines for me. The first time I ever heard of Turkish Airlines was back in 2010 when I read trip report that covered their now defunct First Class service. At the time, Turkish leased several Boeing 777-300ERs from Jet Airways that featured First Class suites with DOORS. It looked incredible and planted a seed in my mind to fly Turkish one day. This wasn’t quite how I pictured my first experience with Turkish, but Economy Class will have to do.
Turkish Airlines 1984
London (LHR) – Istanbul (IST)
Depart: 10:15 PM
Arrive: 4:05 AM
Aircraft: Airbus A321-100
Seat: 29C (Economy Class)
Operating this evening’s flight was the two-year-old TC-JSS, one of the newer Airbus A321-100s in Turkish’s fleet. The seats seem to be exactly the same model as what the legacy American A321s are equipped with. In terms of comfort, the seats were fine but nothing to get excited about. Seat pitch was acceptable. Fortunately, I picked an aisle seat, as the flight was completely full.
Each seat was equipped with access to Turkish’s very good entertainment system, which had a wide variety of content.
My plan for the flight was to sleep as I had grand plans in Cairo the next day. I was so tired that I pretty much passed out as soon as I buckled up. Some time later, I woke up to what sounded like inflight service under way. Wait, is that clinking of silverware I hear? And it smells like food. Ah, it’s probably just the meal service in Business Class. Wanting to maximize sleep, I kept my eyes shut and tried to get back to sleep. Hold up, why is the smell coming from right next to me? I opened my eyes to this:
On this short redeye 1,565 mile flight, Turkish Airlines sees it fit to serve a meal in economy class. Last year, I flew a redeye of similar length from Seattle and Houston on United in First Class. All I got was cold nuts and a cookie. Turkish even staffed with this flight with one of their onboard chefs, complete with a white chef’s coat and floppy hat. I had previously thought that the onboard chefs were reserved for longhaul flights, but I was obviously incorrect.
So what is Turkish cooking up in economy class? “Chicken or pasta?” an expressionless flight attendant asked. Whoa, a full dinner? I sure wasn’t expecting this. I was even more surprised when I peeled back the foil on my meal. Holy moly this looks delicious. There were two decent sized grilled chicken tenderloins accompanied by mashed potatoes and grilled vegetables. It looked far more appetizing than many meals I’ve been offered in premium cabins. Better yet, everything tasted leaps and bounds better than many meals I’ve had in premium cabins. The chicken was delicious and didn’t taste at all processed. The mash potatoes definitely did not come from a box. Both the grilled vegetables and salad, composed of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta cheese, were fantastic. Bread was offered from a basket, and it too was good. Dessert was a mango mousse, which was light and delicious. A choice of drinks was offered, and I went with the very tasty cherry juice.
After dinner, I fell asleep again and woke up as we touched down rather firmly in Istanbul. This flight was a fine introduction to Turkish, and I really looked forward to my onward flight to Cairo. What wasn’t fine was Istanbul Ataturk Airport, which was not a very nice facility to put it mildly. Though as I understand it, Ataturk is slated to be replaced in the very near future. Perhaps things are a little nicer in a lounge. Though I lack Star Alliance Gold status, I did have a choice of three lounges through Priority Pass. I chose the lounge with the most impressive name, Primeclass CIP Lounge. Unfortunately, the lounge wasn’t nearly as impressive as its name. The shower room was small, smelly, and not very clean. The rest of the lounge wasn’t any better, and to characterize the staff as “surly” would be a compliment.
I didn’t stay but a few minutes, as the depressing terminal was a far more pleasant place to be. There was still a good bit of time to kill before departure. Thankfully, the Turkish Airlines operations looked out for me and provided me with plenty of entertainment by assigning my flight a gate in furthest corner of the airport.
Turkish Airlines 690
Istanbul (IST) – Cairo (CAI)
Depart: 6:35 AM
Arrive: 7:50 AM
Aircraft: Airbus A321-100
Seat: 31D (Economy Class)
Another Airbus A321 operated my flight to Cairo, but it seemed to be far older. Perhaps one of the early builds of type, if its 1990s style was any indication. It wasn’t as a quick check of the registration showed, this particular aircraft was delivered new to Turkish back in 2009, which is still relatively young by aircraft standards. While it was equipped with an IFE system at every seat, the screens were tiny by modern standards and looked like something out of the 1990s. The old school cabin design did have one huge positive: the seats. The seats were the old school type before the bean counters got their grubby hands on them. In other words, the seats actually had (some) padding and were actually reasonably comfortable.
A few minutes after scheduled departure time, our A321 was racing down the runway, screaming its little guts out. The reddish orange hues of the rising sun made for a beautiful backdrop as the plane clawed skyward. Inside at seat 31F, I relaxed and enjoyed the extra space as I had the entire row to myself thanks to the light load. I was tired, but I wanted to stay awake for the meal after my experience on my flight from London. Fortunately, the flight attendants had the same idea and they were soon hustling down the aisle serving breakfast.
Breakfast was a choice of scrambled eggs or scrambled eggs. Good thing I love scrambled eggs. I like my scrambled eggs creamy and slightly runny, and Turkish delivered. The eggs were perfect for my tastes. A couple of toast points and a roasted tomato accompanied the eggs. Both were good. The small salad of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives was fresh and crisp. Back home, I would never consider having salad with breakfast. But I found it very refreshing and very enjoyable this morning. Another cup of that delicious cherry juice washed it all down.
I nodded off as we sped over the beautiful craggy mountains of south Turkey and went feet wet over the Mediterranean Sea.
I woke up not far outside of Cairo to the flight attendants running one last coffee, tea, and water run. With a long day ahead of me, a double coffee was in order. The coffee was surprisingly good.
Before long, we were descending into Cairo crossing the Nile River and the city on the way down.
The famous Pyramids of Giza came into view in the latter stages of descent. As I tried to get a picture, the plane banked hard to the left presumably to line up with the runway as the landing gear dropped after the wings were leveled. Touchdown was smooth, and the taxi to the gate short. Unsurprisingly, planes clad in EgyptAir’s very attractive blue and white livery dominated the landscape. Unfortunately, I would soon learn the livery was the best part of the EgyptAir experience.
Despite the obvious, I thoroughly enjoyed both of my flights on Turkish. The most memorable part of the experience was of course the food, presumably due to the legendary DO&CO catering. Service was fine. Everyone I interacted with was polite, but not overly attentive of friendly. Then again, I was flying Economy Class so take that with a grain of salt. I look forward to my next opportunity to fly Turkish.