AFAIK hotel quarantine has been lifted for fully-vaccinated Canadians.

Here is the official Canadian Government website:

OK. Is due to be lifted soon...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/gov...rder-1.6061398

You jumped the gun a bit. lol. Normality will be coming back soon.

YVR-IST in 7 hours?
 

Out of curiosity, looked at how their schedule is going so far.

On June 1 their flight was delayed over 4 hours, and made up for the time in the air.
The flight time is typically over 11 hours and they made it in 7, like East Coast to Western Europe. Wow. I'm pretty impressed.
Now if only the economics were good enough to operate like that every trip...

I think this is a glitch,
If you check the map for that flight, you would realize that you could only track the actual route of the flight over Bulgaria and Turkey. The route for the majority of the flight including the Atlantic crossing and the departure is not available in Flightaware.

East Coast to Western Europe? I think that perhaps you got that the wrong way around...............West Coast to Eastern Europe (yes Turkey is not normally called Eastern Europe, but in this case is beyond almost all the countries normally considered to be "Eastern" Europe.)

I was saying 7 hours is like East Coast to Western Europe amount of time. I've never heard of a West Coast to Eurasia flight in the same amount.

I don't want to start a new threat and hope someone might be able to answer this.
I am planning to purchase a ticket in Business Class from YVR via IST to DXB with stop-overs in IST both ways for which TK has some great fares.
The only 'concern' I have is that the return from IST to YVR might have to be changed due the ever changing situations and I wonder how easy/difficult it is to make a date change with TK since I have never flown and dealt with them but really want to fly them out of YVR instead of the usual LH, AC etc.

So a ticket with a stopover means that you would be might need to book a multi city ticket if the stopover is over 24 hours and due to this you might need to make changes on the phone and the website change tool might not work. However, a hotline agent would be able to easily change your itinerary on the phone. Just a reminder that during changes, if there is any applicable fare difference, it would be charged to you.

Thank you so much ISTFlyer, you are always so helpful, really appreciate it. Your information makes sense and it's what I thought would be the case. Yes, I would do a multi city booking since I really want to stop-over in Istanbul and spend some time there as long as the whole corona situation allows for it, especially with regards to entry into Dubai which is still different coming from Turkey than other countries in Europe which is strange since Turkey isn't doing so much worse than other countries right now but hopefully in a month or two when I fly, things will be even better. Either way, I don't mind getting a test and I will be fully vaccinated by then as well.

Thank you again!

Quarantine requirements are changing for vaccinated Canadian citizens/residents (only) returning home as of July 5th.
The details are being discussed in the Canada destination forum:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cana...velers-62.html

I am wondering what is the COVID situation in Istanbul, thinking of book a flight for late August, but it requires a 9 and 10 hours connection (inbound/outbound) at Istanbul. Is there a hotel within the airside that allows hourly booking or if there are sleeping rooms in the lounge?

The active case numbers are decreasing in Turkey day by day. There is an airside hotel that allows hourly booking: YOTELair. The sleeping rooms in the TK Lounges remain closed due to COVID.

Lovely trip and great service! Good views of Northern Canada and the Rockies enroute. Lots of Indian subcontinent passengers. And perhaps 10 or so also connecting to Alaska’s SEA service. There was no airport or TK guidance prior to the trip that this is supported airside without CBSA entry, but it works as you would expect.