SFflyer123

I flew SFO-IST by Turkish Airlines business class in their 777. It was a phenomenal product. They apparently are voted the best business class in Europe, and I can see why. The food is excellent, and the seat is long and comfortable. The service is excellent, though I think part of the limitations with the service is secondary to the language barrier.

For those who want the entire video trip report, here it is:


The business class line was extremely short, but the economy line was quite long. The business class was not full. The lounge that they use is the United Club lounge.

UA lounge by sfflyer123, on Flickr

UA lounge meats by sfflyer123, on Flickr


After that, I head to the gate. You can see the B777 getting ready to take me ½ the way across the world for this 12.5 hour flight.

b777 by sfflyer123, on Flickr

After getting on, the business class cabin is excellent. The legroom is truly amazing. I can barely touch the foot rest, and I am over 6 feet tall.

leg room by sfflyer123, on Flickr

They don’t serve alcohol on the ground, only in the air. But the pre-departure drinks are fantastic and great. Kids would love them:

pre-departure drink by sfflyer123, on Flickr

After take off, the first thing they give you is a Turkish delight. A very nice treat.

turkish delight by sfflyer123, on Flickr

We then go for the amuse bouche, which already is a ton of food. It is pretty good.

amuse bouche by sfflyer123, on Flickr

Afterwards, they serve us warm nuts and a drink. I got champagne to start.

nuts and champagne by sfflyer123, on Flickr

The set up is like being in a fancy restaurant. It is very impressive.

table set up by sfflyer123, on Flickr

The appetizer is huge. You can get as much as you want, so you basically can get full off appetizer. Be careful not to get too much food.

appetizer by sfflyer123, on Flickr

They then serve soup in a real bowl on top of a real platter. Very impressive. Like being in a restaurant.

soup by sfflyer123, on Flickr

I then have the sea bass, which is delicious. It is better than most restaurant sea basses that I have had. Just scrumptious.

sea bass by sfflyer123, on Flickr

Although there were phenomenal desserts, I could only get fruit. I was too stuffed.

fruit by sfflyer123, on Flickr

I then have a cup of the Turkish tea, which is served in a cup that you get in Istanbul. Very nice.

turkish tea by sfflyer123, on Flickr

After a long nap, I wake up to have fruit, oatmeal, orange juice, and coffee.

fruit by sfflyer123, on Flickr

For my main course, I have the farm fresh eggs, which appear to have been cooked in the airplane oven. Very impressive.

eggs by sfflyer123, on Flickr

More coffee to wake me up.

coffee by sfflyer123, on Flickr

Overall, this is a phenomenal business class product. In my opinion, it’s better than LX, LH, and UA. The only drawback is that it’s far to travel to Europe. You have to fly past Europe, then connect and fly back to your destination. So if you’re on vacation and the price is right, I would fly Turkish business class. However, if you’re pressed for time, this may not be the best option for you.

For the full report, the video shows the entire trip:


As always, I make no money off the video, and there are no advertisements.

Thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoy it!

jimat3c

You can have champagne for your PDB, you just have to ask. I have flown with TK on numerous occasions and have never been refused.

KLouis

What kind of language barrier are you talking about? I never flew TK with a crew member who would not speak English!

Surftel

Flew this same flight a few months ago with my wife. It really is the best European business class. Excellent food, excellent seat......and the lounge in Istanbul is amazing

Surftel

The English of the crew on the flights I have taken were limited but everything else was so good it really didn't matter

popoemt

Oh boyyyy, I am on the return of this flight in April! Getting excited, long lay over in IST to take advantage of the Turkish lounge and then what looks to be an amazing flight.

Thanks for Sharing SF!

SFflyer123

Never knew this. Thanks.


They can speak English, but they are not super proficient in it.

Thanks for the comment!

Agree. They speak it, but it's not great. I ask for a glass of the "Bordeaux", and they poured me a glass of port instead.

Great! I will post the return flight in a bit also!

offerendum

Interesting way to serve the champagne I didn´t flew Turkish Airlines for over 20 years, but food looks really great.

TPJ

Ha, ha

Quite few times I asked for Syrah and was given champagne...

Nice report - thanks for sharing!

Madone59

Great TR, thank you for sharing. I've always wanted to try TK - they look great!!

RandomBaritone

Great TR! The only issue we found with TK J was that they kept their cabin really warm, as in over 80ºF overnight. Kind of ruined the flight for me, since I couldn't sleep. I asked an FA if she could make the cabin cooler and she looked at me as if I were crazy. :P

Did you happen to notice the same thing?

PoincianaKings

Come on guys cut the non-English speakers some slack.

How many UA or DL attendants can speak Turkish?

Yes we are luckily enough to speak English but seriously why should every person who speaks English expect that, when flying a non-English speaking carrier, the crew should speak English as fluently as we do?

It may shock you but when traveling DL and AA I have had communication issues. I speak English, I am English. The crew on DL and AA speak English also but still they have delivered me completely different drinks to those that I have ordered. Or queried what I wanted when I said "can I have some new cutlery" rather than "can I have some new silverware".

Anyway good TR.

RandomBaritone

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the cabin crew to speak the language of the country in which a flight originates. Like others, I found the TK FAs' command of English to be, shall we say, modest. Didn't bother me much though.

PoincianaKings

I'd disagree but maybe that comes from living in Europe where we are much more used to flying carriers where crew members can't always speak fluent English.

And it works the other way, I have been on numerous BA flights where the crew can only speak English. For example recent BA flights include BGO and TXL and none of the crew could speak Norwegian or German respectively. Come to think of it none of the crew on the BGO service could speak Italian but that wasn't much use.

I can also think of DL and AA flights to French and Italian cities where the crew members could only speak English (except one or two who could speak Spanish) and very basic French/Italian (think bonjour/ciao/oui etc).

Also remember we are the lucky ones who speak the language of international air travel. Imagine being only able to speak Greek and trying to navigate LHR, PVG or JFK.

Anyway back on topic- a great TR as I said earlier.

pnsnkr

We recently flew MLE-IST-IAH in Business Class on TK and our overall experience has been a mixed bag. I really don't see us flying TK business class again unless it is an absolute necessity.

The MLE-IST on the A333 was mediocre at best. The food was just horrible; we were served - no not luke warm but - cold food and had to return it for proper heating in the oven. The business class seats were one of the narrowest we'd ever experienced and were quite uncomfortable as a bed. Not to mention a balmy 24-degree celsius cabin - I saw the flight attendant making a semblance of adjusting the thermostat and that's how I knew the actual temperature. It was so hot that we had to wet our clothes in order to feel cool; this is even after repeated requests to lower the cabin temperature. Both the narrow uncomfortable bed and the sauna-esque cabin were repeat performers on the IST-IAH 777 route as well.

The food and catering was actually restaurant-quality and quite delicious on the IST-IAH route. Sadly, this alone was not sufficient to offset the subpar hard product and the abysmal ground service at IST. While there were countless gates that were seemingly empty, we had to be cattled over to a really really remote stand. The additional enhanced semblance of a security check at not-really-a-gate was a long-drawn, time-consuming joke; though this may not be completely attributable to TK; however, there was absolutely no priority service for business class passengers either at this gate security check or for the bus transport to the remote stand. Of course, by the time we were onboard the plane, there was no attempt of any kind of PDB service by the crew. Overall, IST was one of the most horrible places to connect as a premium passenger - even worse than my previous IAD connection experience