[MENTION=61579]acc[/MENTION], yes I wrote about both airlines to DOT. It seems that the 'alliance/partnership" isn't as smooth as they would like us to believe.
[MENTION=1562]hfly[/MENTION]: yes, we will NEVER really know what happened/happens behind the scenes. The airlines don't want us to know and they only get into Cover their butt mode when a problem happens. I suppose the vast majority of these type situations go smoothly.
I wonder if TK12 made it on time, would they have let my wife board TK271 with the boarding pass she had been given? We will never know. Perhaps they wrote her off as being late so they put another passenger on that plane, and then when she arrived , reused her, even though TK271 was delayed itself 2 hours. As for not putting her on TK269 , as they were required to do, we have no idea what they saw in their computer.
[MENTION=298919]nacho[/MENTION]: that's terrible how people treat others and assume , and I agree the language 'barrier' of a conversation of 2 non native English speakers would make communication harder. This often is the case, and one of the reasons I get a bit proactive But when he said he couldn't understand me as well, I kind of rolled my eyes a bit. My 1st job was telemarketing because I have a good voice for phone conversations I have heard. I do believe them laughing at her predicament and making comments about her being a female by herself was inappropriate. But tbh my criticism has to be the untrained TK employees she dealt with, NOT IST. TK is a dominate presence there and I suppose the TK 'customer' service sets the stage of a lot of peoples expectations.
But if the mess up happened after her being late for TK271, it does bring up 2 valid questions:
1. Although late , she still had an hour+ to board because TK271 was itself delayed 2 hours. How come the TK staff didn't let her board that flight, since she had boarding pass for it and they weren't that far from the gate so I find it weird the TK staff didn't realize TK271 had delayed boarding.
2. Why do the reps at the 800 TK customer service number say they had my wife scheduled to board TK269 , if she misses TK271 and that she will get hotel. They pulled up that info when I gave the 6 digit reference code. LOT even put the new flight(tk269) on their flight plan for my wife. I took a screenshot of it before they tiook it down. They also had , by itself as flight#2, TK271, which I screenshot as well. LOT representative said they had it show incase she made the flight. He said that his records shows that TK canceled that flight for her. Did they cancel it because of overbooking and put someone else on instead of her? We don't know.
vote with your wallet
TK and LOT are only 2 airlines that get there with one transfer and direct. I heard Lufthansa will and Austrian will be in the future. Who knows.
BTW as for the reason TK12 was late, I know it! There was a sick passenger on the plane. My wife was talking to me when she said had to go because TK12 was landing. It was about a little over an hour from IST so I thought maybe they were just preparing early the landing procedures. But they decided to land in Sofia. Thing is they never actually told passengers that they landed in Sofia until it was actually landed. I knew before my wife because I tracked it in the airport with Flighradar24. Thoughts of some virus exposure was in my head because of how abrupt it was. They had asked if there was a doctor onboard. It so happens, a rheumatologist was sitting right next to my wife, and he reluctantly raised his hand. He diagnosed that the person had a likely appendicitis and that isn't an emergency. He said they could easily just continue to IST, but plane decided to divert.