Hello,

We are considering booking Turkish Airlines business class from San Francisco to Sicily spending several days in Istanbul on the way there as allowed with Turkish Airlines’ stopover program. Obviously we would need to arrange an e-visa for those days in Turkiye.

We would then head on to Palermo and after spending about a week there, we will fly back to US from Catania with an ~8 hour scheduled layover in Istanbul. We are hoping to take advantage of the sleeping rooms in the Turkish Airlines business lounge. We seem to meet the criteria – Business Class, 4-9 hr layover, a connecting flight of 8+ hours, with both flights on Turkish Airlines.

One issue is I read is that it's necessary to have a same-day departure to use the lounge. Our scheduled arrival to IST from Palermo is 11:50pm with our flight to SFO departing IST at 8:05am. I assume we won’t have any issues as long as we wait until 12am to enter the lounge? And is it possible to reserve the sleeping rooms? If a room isn’t available, is the lounge open 24 hours so that we can at least hang out there overnight?

Final question – do we need a visa in order to access that lounge when connecting from Catania to USA? I assume the Business Lounge is airside and we won’t need to “enter Turkiye” to access it, but just want to confirm. If a visa is needed, we would need to look into a multiple entry visa or possibly 2 e-visas.

Thank you!