How to fly A3 from Bodrum or surrounding area to Athens?
 

I have a somewhat strange challenge here.

Situation:
- I have to travel from Bodrum to Athens.
- I really do not want to fly TK (I've already booked a bizarre routing to avoid them for the inbound), and would rather fly A3, even if it means a turboprop.
- Catching multiple ferries would probably be too time-consuming.
- There is a ferry from Bodrum to Kos, but the timing does not work out (the ferry gets to Kos in the morning, and the earliest A3 flight I can catch from Kos leaves in the evening. I'll have baggage so hanging around Kos airport for 10 hours or so does not appeal to me).

Is there any other airport in the area served by A3 with a ferry connection from the same island to Bodrum or within an hour or so of drive from there?
Marmaris has a ferry to Rhodes with much more frequent A3 service but getting to Marmaris from Bodrum is a bit time-consuming.

I've looked and looked, but I just cannot get this figured out.
I've found a SkyExpress flight out of Kos that is better timed, but if you can come up with A3 option, that would be my preference.

The only other option I can think of is to bus it to Izmir and catch a flight from there to ATH. But from my previous experiences flying this route A3 doesn't fly daily and flight times alternate between morning and evenings, so don't know if that would fit your needs.

No ferries to other islands AFAIK! The only other option - one which I once did myself - is to entertain yourself while on Kos. I did something similar on Chios after travelling in by morning ferry from Turkey: I just took a rental car from the port, put the baggage in the boot, and went touring on the island for the day before catching an onward overnight ferry to Piraeus in the evening.

Mulțumesc, Romanianflyer.

The date I need to fly is sadly one when they don't operate ADB-ATH.

I may just have to hang around Kos, or maybe resort to SkyExpress which substantially reduces the wait time.

Do you mind if I ask what your problem with TK is? They're a rather good airline and, personally, I'd rather spend a couple of hours in the excellent lounge at IST than on a Flying Dolphin travelling to Kos. I'm a self-proclaimed expert of round-about routings, often just for fun, but even I wouldn't do that! Why not take a cheap flight Bodrum to IST (Pegasus, Atlas etc.) then the A3 (OA) Dash 8 from there?

You can ask. :D My problem with TK is that I do not trust their safety standards.

It's not that I am worried about being in an accident. Statistically speaking the chance of that is extremely low. Instead, it's the matter of principle that I have no desire to part with my money unless I have a reasonable level of trust in the airline's safety standards.

Not that I am particularly keen on travelling on Flying Dolphin Noise-generator though!

Besides, even if I caught the afternoon BJV-IST on the A320 (that fleet is a bit better than the 737), I'd end up waiting for 5 hours at IST for OA/A3 Dash in the evening.

I think you've been spending too much time on the BAEC forum, they love to slag off TK there (probably because the service is vastly superior!). Oh, and let's face it, even BA isn't squeaky clean as regards to their safety record!

No no, there are people who genuinely do not trust TK safety standards. I am one of them and that is nothing to do with TK having better service standard than BA, KL or Air Koryo. And I do trust BA safety standard more than TK ones, but consider BA service standard very poor.
I will give you a hint: if you do some research, you will see that the majority of professionals who are knowledgeable about airline safety (because it is their professional field) avoid TK,

Not at all, actually.

I do not use internet forums when it comes to something like this.

My concerns originate from entirely professional sources that I trust.

Now, if somebody claims that they have information indicating that TK has lower safety standards than e.g. BA or LH, I'm perfectly willing to accept that. But what you -- in my opinion -- fail to take into consideration is the old saying, "You're much more likely to get killed on the way to the airport than during the flight itself." I mean, 10,000 people die in traffic accidents in Turkey each year. Taking a boat from Bodrum to Kos is probably several times more risky than flying with the most unsafe airline in the world. So, deciding not to fly TK for safety reasons is in my opinion a lack of seeing air travel in perspective.

I refer you to my own sentences on this thread, with emphasis added:

Would you mind sharing the day of the week and season that you will be flying? There are quite some seasonal flights out of Bodrum and Izmir, perhaps flying into another country and changing there to a flight to ATH would work?

Way more miles to fly of course, but in time it may be better than waiting around all day :)

Hahaha, I think you might find it funny to come up with something like STN or BRU (yes, I did look, considered it for a moment, and went "Ugh, no") ... Eeeek! :eek:

It's in October, and likely to be Thursday. My present thought is ferry + SkyExpress. It gets me into Athens at a decent time too. My main concern is that they only have one flight a day and if they cancel it, I'll be in a bit of a poo, as I need to be in Athens that night. I could of course book the later A3 flight as an insurance policy and rebook it to another date if I don't need it (I want to pre-book in case they're full).

Otherwise it would be something silly like Bodrum -> Kos by ferry, Kos to Rhodes by ferry, and then RHO-ATH on A3/OA, which is probably too silly even for me because for all I know, the ferry might get cancelled, although I do prefer the A320 over a turboprop (but then, I get the pleasure of spending 3+ hours on a ferry if I did that).

Still, I would very much welcome your weird and wonderful solution (no "charter a flight!" please though, that would be too expensive for what I'm trying to achieve here :D ).

So maybe you should change your nickname into TK Phobia ;) ;) ;)

I was hoping for something closer...but there do not seem to be many flights out on Thursday. There are plenty of Pegasus flights to places around Athens but I'm thinking that you would prefer to avoid those too.

You could consider taking the morning ferry to Rhodos and fly out from there. The distance from port to Airport seems somewhat smaller (Compared to Kos) so the transfer may be easier. Having said that, prices from RHO are likely going to be higher. But it does have A3/OA flights around noon..

Is the ferry you are thinking of to Rhodes from Marmaris? If so, I could definitely do that. Also flights are quite freqnent and not turboprop from memory.