Skyteam to Ankara Turkey?
 

Traveling to Ankara from Los Angeles in January. What would be the best way to get there flying Skyteam?

When I flew last year, I chose a business elite itinerary LAX-JFK-IST on Delta and then added on business class on Turkish Airways for the short-haul domestic connections between IST and Ankara. You may also be able to fly directly to Ankara ex Europe via CDG or AMS on Sky Team. If you take the Turkish airlines connection option via IST, which I like, remember that the airline in Ankara has a separate business class terminal for check-in. Thus, the taxis will try to take you to the main big terminal while it's far better in reality to go to the Turkish Air exclusive business class check-in terminal. Also I liked to pick up some carpets on the trip-- with this connection, I was able to use the 3 suitcase 70lb allowance in DL business elite for the return flight and only needed to pay $60 excess luggage for the third suitcase ex Ankara because it was for the short-haul domestic flight. KL/AF would have slammed me with the international excess baggage fee of 150 EUR if I had flown Ankara to Europe.

www.expertflyer.com supports flight searches by big 3 alliance: Star, OW, or SkyTeam. Maybe there's seasonal service not found on the dates I checked, but EF finds no SkyTeam service to Ankara - not even Tarom Romanian Airlines.

So does matrix.itasoftware.com (use "/ alliance skyteam" as routing code) (found nothing all the way to Ankara though).

Doesn't look good here, either
http://www.skyscanner.com/flights-to...a-airport.html

From LAX your most painless routes are either LAX-IST-ESB on TK, or IST-FRA-ESB on LH. Ottherwise you are looking at LAX-JFK-IST-ESB with DL and then TK for the last as no ST carriers fly to ESB.

I can confirm - no Skyteam into Ankara (yet - government has built a beautiful huge airport in themiddle of nowhere, and will want to fill it, but not risk competition to Turkish airlines).

Only two viable possibilities :
1) fly into Istanbul and then take a short hop on Turkish (make sure the internal flight leaves from Ataturk and not Sabiha Gocken)
2) fly into Munich and then take a Lufthansa flight direct to Ankara

FWIW, Turkish give good mileage on * with their internal flights...

KLM to IST via AMS, and then a short domestic hop?

Or LAX-FCO-IST, but no service to Ankara on AZ either (and check that LAX-FCO is not on a 767, otherwise you'll be better off with any other carrier).

Are there any cheap domestic flights to ESB? Perhaps some low-fare airlines Im not thinking of...or are domestic flights within Turkey pretty pricey? TK looks like it charges about $300+ for domestic roundtrips from IST (at least during June of this year according to ITA).

Pegasus Airlines offers service IST to ESB but (apparently) not the other way. I found a US$80 one way fare with them.

Wikipedia maintains a list of all carriers that serve ESB, and it includes several European discount carriers from a few different gateways.

There is train service between Istanbul and Ankara. Scheduled time each way is 6 hours or less.

There's also a lot of bus service.

Thanks!

Uhhh $300 RT is a pretty decent price.

I wouldn't say that for such a hop in Turkey.

And that is pretty much the top Y price, find me another 1 hour hop in Europe which consistantly prices out at $300 RT in Econ, no, nor an LCC that you have to book a month in advance, but on a real airline.