TK in Istanbul Airport: Thread #2 - Lounges
 

As there is a lot of discussion going about the lounges on in the TK ops from Istanbul Airport forum, and as all the discussion about which lounge offers what, the access requirements, and the future lounge openings ( Exclusive, Arrival ) would be useful for most of TK passengers so I had wanted to create a separate thread for this discussion.

Also, we all know that this forum would have hundreds of questions in the next few days about lounges so it would be really useful if you contribute the thread by sharing your experiences and share photos of the lounges if you have visited them.

I am creating a small WIKI for this thread as well and of course, you are welcome to edit the WIKI.

The great furniture move has begun
 

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...bdaf88b1f8.jpg
In case anyone was wondering if they are reusing old furniture

The two Pianos have been moved weeks ago ;-)

I'll arrive Istambul for transit on April 4th, (local time 18:00)... will there be anything left on the lounge? :D
Also wondering about DutyFree shops, any Sale going on?

By the way, nice work ISTFlyer for your WIKI on ISL new airport!

It's not my WIKI, the WIKI belongs to the community.

At Atatürk Airport, sale is going on for duty free shops and don't worry in the 4th of April, some parts of the old lounge could be closed, however it would still have the necessary amount of seating, food areas, etc...

Since they won't need to cater for any lounge visitors after the 6th, the food will have to be eaten or thrown away. @stevespam - you need to help them avoid wasting that food ;)

So I think I'll pass all on board meals during my flight lol.
I know a few lounges, IST is one of my favourite, nice selection of food/drinks.

Anyone know what will be the differences between the different lounges besides that I would expect the more generic *A Gold lounge will be more crowded, but from facilities/food/service - any differences? I did not really catch any of these differences in the wiki/discussions.

Cheers!

There is some more Cheese on the mini pizzas and the orange juice is 4% more organic. That's all I remember after getting back to the present using my time machine.

Very good to hear TK will have a lounge only for J. The old lounge was good until it was rush hour, after that it was terrible, no place to sit, 3h to have a shower etc.

Also hope the new airport has larger corridors than the old one, where reaching a gate is not the most pleasant experience.

any word on the priority pass lounge on the new airport ? especially in the intl terminal ?

There would be two contract lounges in Istanbul Airport; the IGA Lounge which would accept Business Class passengers of most non-*A passengers and also offer pay to entry for €59, and free access for IGAPass members. Also the SkyTeam alliance would have a lounge for its own member airlines and probably for pay-to-enter or lounge memberships as well similar to some of their other lounges. However, there is no information about the Priority Pass Lounges at the moment.

For photos of the IGA Lounge ( the contract one ) you could visit the Istanbul Airport Master Thread in the Europe Forum.

Unfortunately, nobody knows at the moment. TK has shared limited amount of photos of both lounges and none of the photos of the offerings at the lounge. Probably some discussions would refer to this next week after several FT members have tried both lounges.

Thank you very much for the insight, it was truly most useful. Hopefully they will also be using organic pistachios for their baklavas.

Well, I do hope it will be something substantial - though it seems to be opposite of how LH and SAS operate their lounges, where non *A Gold pax in J-class are treated as sub-class passengers with only access to Business lounges while *A Gold members and their top-tier card holdes seems to have access to the better lounges.

Cheers!