Review of Turkish Airlines flight Istanbul → Ankara in Economy

Hi there,

welcome to this Turkish Airlines flight review from Istanbul to Ankara. Check out the first report here to see TK's new 737 MAX 8 and the full routing description.

After four great days in Istanbul, we decided to take a day trip to the capital city of Turkey, Ankara.
Flight is scheduled at 8:00 in the morning, so we took a cab from Istanbul to the Airport. It took about 30 minutes at this time, and we arrived at 6:30 at IST.

This new airport is huge and modern.

A lot going on at this early hour here.

TK has a dedicated terminal for the CIP passengers (Business and status) but we went on the regular way and through the normal Check-in desks.

Here's the nice black Boarding Pass:

Security was done in no time, no need to get anything out of your luggage and absolutely no queues there. Love it!

We then took a stroll through the airport to find the lounge:

The lounge is decent with enough seating options for everyone:

The lounge isn't that great when it comes to food or beverages with only water, coffee and tea available.

I went with a coffee and a few pastries.

My best friend was a bit hungrier and went with a bagel.

Boarding was called at 7:25 and we'll board a bus directly from the lounge.

A nice Business Class bus is waiting for us:

It's fitted with leather seats, a very nice touch for such a small ride ^^

Less than 5 minutes after, we can board our 737-900ER, TC-JYL, 8 years old at that time.

Seat pitch is not great, as always on TK I think. 

IFE is less modern than on the MAX but still a very good thing to have on a short flight.

And here's my mistake: we got a few aircraft changes and I got moved to 9A instead of 8A during the process. I forgot to check again if my seat was OK and of course I end up with this… Shame on me!

Anyway cabin is ready and we pushed back a few minuted behind schedule at 8:04.

Safety video was shown and done in Turkish and English.

45 minutes of flight time today to reach Ankara.

The crew quickly began serving us some breakfast:

A hot tomato-mozzarella sandwich was served along with a choice of coffee/tea or OJ.

A very nice and rare safety card to collect :)

We quickly began our approach into ESB.

Landing took place at 9:00 and we reached our parking spot at 9:03. 3 minutes late, that's more than OK!

As soon as we reached our parking spot everyone just jumped out of their seats…

We disembarked smoothly and here's a look of the Business Class.

Let's head out to Ankara!

A nice airport, looks a bit oversized but it's clean and smooth.

We then took the bus to the city, cost us 25 TL each, 0.80€.

Hope you enjoyed reading,
See you in the next one.
Jules