Hello everyone and welcome to another short series! This particular one is a series consisting of a round-trip from Stockholm to Vienna via Istanbul. That is a lot of back-tracking but there are reasons for choosing this itinerary :). Part 1 of this series covers the first flight, from Stockholm to Istanbul on TK1792 with Turkish Airlines.
Background
On one random day in September my dad noticed he needed to stay 3 additional nights at a hotel before the end of 2016 in order to upgrade his membership level. Staying at one of their hotels in Stockholm was feasible but not too interesting for my dad. He asked me to look out for cheap fares to Europe in late-October/early-November when I had a week of holidays. I did what he asked for.
A few days pass and I come across an interesting fare from Stockholm to Vienna, a fare involving TK, two early-morning departures and a stopover at IST. Dates were 30 October - 02 November. The fare was at $110 R/T per person and I know a piece of checked baggage and food is included with TK. The other carriers (LH, OS, ET) etc were ranging from $170-250 R/T per person, the fare with TK was definitely the cheapest. I immediately told my dad about this, he seemed skeptical at first as both of us have had 8 bad to decent flights with TK in the past (in 2011/2012). My dad finally said okay to flying with TK but wasn't pleased with the flight timings, 6:35 departure from ARN and 07:00 departure from Vienna. There were other flights but those ones were too expensive.
Anyways, after a few discussions we booked the tickets despite the timings and just went with it. Both of us had never been in Austria before us so it would be a new country for both. However, upon further inspection we obviously realised we had a 6 hour layover at IST, the thought about visiting the city popped up (country number 2 for the trip). I also forgot how close Slovakia was to Vienna, I had a thought about renting a car in VIE and then driving to Bratislava, Slovakia. Dad thought it was a good idea and agreed to it, that was the 3rd country for the trip. That was not all though, afterwards I saw Budapest was just a 200km drive away from Bratislava and told my father about it. Dad immediately agreed to it and that was the 4th country planned for this trip. The original plan was just to visit Austria but now it expanded to Turkey, Slovakia and Hungary. From one to four countries in a period of three days. All of this required extensive amount of planning but in the end I was still skeptical about it ever materializing, I told myself not to be disappointed if we only managed to visit Austria as that was the original plan. We will see if it ever actually happened I presume!
NOTE: Pictures used in this report are taken with my camera and my phone.
Itinerary
Part 1 - ARN-IST, TK1792, Turkish Airlines, Airbus A320-200, TC-JPR - You are here
Part 2 - IST-VIE, TK1887, Turkish Airlines, Airbus A321-200, TC-JSV - Here
Part 3 - VIE-IST, TK1890, Turkish Airlines, Airbus A321-200, TC-JRH - Here
Part 4 - IST-ARN, TK1795, Turkish Airlines, Airbus A321-200, TC-JSA - Here
There were several aircraft changes before we finally took off with TK. TK1887 was changed a few times between a regular A321 and 32B. TK1890 was first scheduled as an A320, then A321, then A320, then A321 Sharklets and finally back to A321 in a timespan of 30 days (320 - 321 - 320 - 321 if you don't count 321 Sharklets). TK1795 was changed from A321 to A321 Sharklets and back to A321 but unfortunately TK1792 never got changed. A change on TK1792 ARN-IST would have been appreciated as TK's A320s features a pretty old cabin product (all or almost all of them). Unfortunately TK1791/1792 is one of those TK flights that rarely get changed and that was the case for my flight too. Anyways, saturday night approached and it was soon time to get up for at 03:00 AM on Sunday morning. This was the day where DST (daylight saving time) ends which means moving back 1 hour from UTC+2 to UTC+1. Turkey decided to stay at summer time this year which meant staying at UTC+3. Turkish Airlines have reduced frequency to a lot of destinations and cut some destinations all together or for the winter season, more than 30% of their network has been affected including ARN. All the horrible events and the whole situation has made life hard for TK and Turkey in general I guess, IST-ARN has been cut from 21 to 17 weekly flights. The SAW-ARN flight was first cut from 7 to 5 weekly flights and now cancelled since September.
The last time I flew with TK in April 2012 was on TK1791 IST-ARN, resuming my TK flights with TK1792 ARN-IST seemed pretty logical to me. TK1792 and TK1795 are the only TK flights I haven't done on the IST-ARN-IST routing, I should be done with them after this trip :). Brief information about our flight the night before.
I managed to get a few hours of sleep before getting up at 03:11 AM on Sunday "morning", a quick shower followed by some breakfast should do before heading out to Stockholm-Arlanda Airport. My breakfast at 03:30 AM local time consisted of rye pillows in milk, rye bread, a strawberry yogurt drink and some OJ.
I did my final checks after breakfast while dad did his and later walked to our car. We took our secondary old VW Passat today, the car I use for learning purposes.
A medium-sized baggage, a backpack and my camera bag would accompany us on this trip.
Driving on the E4 motorway to Arlanda Airport at 04:15 AM local time, the roads were pretty much empty at this time.
Approaching Arlanda Airport.
Local night bus 593 can be seen in front of us, it runs from Stockholm C to the city of Uppsala via ARN at night replacing the commuter train at these hours. There is also local night bus 592 running from Stockholm C to ARN at night.
Taking the exit towards the BETA long-term parking lot.
Beta long-term parking.
Found a spot after a few minutes.
Local time, 04:34 AM.
This picture was only taken to remember where we parked our car as we always seem to forget that causing some extra hassle everytime we come back to Stockholm, you have to take a shuttle bus to the terminals from the long-term parking lots. The bus service is free, they also take you to the rental cars area and police station. The other bus service serving the Alfa parking lot serves the Jumbohostel, one of the Radisson Blu hotels, Sixt rental car area and the police station.
One of the buses going in the opposite direction.
The bus arrived after a few minutes and dropped us off at Terminal 5 after a 7-minute trip.
Going upstairs to the departures level.
The security line for all gates at T5 was really long but fortunately we would use the other security check at the other side of Terminal 5 as that one is closer to the gates TK use.
Line started here but we wouldn't line up here, first we had to leave the bag at the TK counters which were located at the other side of T5.
Walking to the Turkish Airlines counters.
FIDS, this FIDS only shows departures from Terminal 5. Departures from T2, T3 and T4 are not shown here. The clock is showing 05:55 here but it's actually 04:55, they haven't changed it to Central European time instead of having it on Central European Summer time. Not good ARN.
Turkish Airlines check-in counters, we had already done OLCI the day before but had to get our bag dropped. A friendly agent got our bag checked-in efficiently and gave us tags for our hand luggage.
There was not much to do here so we decided to clear security. TK uses the non-Schengen gates 17-24 at ARN which are close to the security check for gates 11-24.
The other security check, the line started from here.
DY bag-drop area.
12 minutes have passed, making progress.
We were through after approximately 17 minutes.
Passport control before entering the non-Schengen gates 17-24. Flight TK1792 would use gate 19 today, I haven't departed from this area since I flew with TK back in 2012.
Excuse my horrible try at night photography, I didn't do too much spotting at this time here.
Apparently there was an "Observation deck" at this area after passport control, I have never seen this before.
The "observation deck" didn't offer too many clear views, most of the windows here were really bad for plane spotting.
Flight information:
Airline: Turkish Airlines
Flight no & route: TK1792 ARN-IST
Aircraft: Airbus Industrie A320-200
Scheduled time of departure (actual): 06:35 AM (06:54 AM)
Scheduled time of arrival (actual): 12:10 PM (11:32 AM)
Scheduled flight time (actual): 3h 35 min (2h 38 min)
Our A320 TC-JPR, delivered to TK in October 2008.
Flight SK3416 to Istanbul.
The gate area.
The Norwegian flight to Tel Aviv required an additional security check.
The priority boarding call was made at 06:07 AM, with boarding for the general public announced shortly afterwards.
There's apparently a new rule for Swedish citizens entering Turkey (not that new, from 2015), our passport needs to be valid for at least 150 days if we want to enter Turkey. My dad's passport was only valid for 147-148 days which the agent noticed and said "You can't enter Turkey with this passport", my dad told her "We are connecting in Istanbul to Vienna" and then she let him through. I learned about this rule the night before which was too late. One country was already gone from the list but I still wasn't entirely sold. I mean, my dad's passport wasn't eligible because of two days (not even expired, just this 150-day rule). I was thinking about this on the entire flight and still had a tiny percentage of hope despite what the agent just said..
Walking down the jetbridge.
Newspapers were available before entering the aircraft if I remember correctly.
A friendly crew member greeted us when entering the aircraft.
Making our way to seat 17A and 17B.
Seat pitch was okay but the legroom wasn't good at all, my knees kept hitting the seat in front of me. I am 179cm tall (5 feet, 10,5 inches). The actual seat wasn't comfortable to sit on IMO.
Overhead bins.
The load factor on today's flight was around 95%, there were only a few unoccupied seats.
Cup-holder.
Boarding was completed, most checks were done and they began showing their safety video on these overhead screens. One thing I noticed is that this safety video was the exact same safety video from 2011/2012 according to my memory.
KL B738.
DY B738.
AB A320 to TXL.
Pushback commenced at 06:37 AM local time.
TG B77W arrived from Bangkok.
Taxiing to runway 01L.
Another AB A320, this one to DUS.
Martin1405 tracked my flight once again, thank you very much! All FR24 screenshots in this FR were taken by him.
Ready for takeoff from rwy 01L.
Rolling down.
Climbing out of Arlanda at 06:54 AM.
Banking towards Istanbul with the rising sun.
Climbing to cruising altitude.
Stockholm archipelago.
My phone's battery is a mess, it got down to 60% since I woke up. I had to charge it using my powerbank in order to keep it alive until arrival at VIE later in the evening.
The safety card found in the seat pocket, it wasn't in the best condition but it is there.
Shop&Miles magazine.
Flight information and the moving map was shown on the overhead screens which was definitely appreciated. I fell asleep for 35 minutes after this picture was taken.
The tray table, waking up just before the breakfast service.
The breakfast was served approximately 50 minutes after departure. The main consisted of a small toast with turkey, spinach and something else which I don't know the name of. A cake, a bun, water and a bowl with cheese, cucumber, an olive and a slice of tomato were also included in the meal. My drink of choice was OJ as always. I have seen this meal on pictures before so it looked familiar. It is of course impressive that TK serves hot meals on these short flights in the first place, ahead of most of the competition in this department. The presentation is good and the quality is impressive too. I thought the main was pretty tasty and had a lot of variety in it, the cake was dry but still not too bad. There aren't too many negative aspects of this. All in all it was a very good meal with impressive quality as always with TK, bonus points for TK here. Metal cutlery is also nice.
A refreshing towel.
Done with the meal, there was some cheese and an olive left in the smaller bowl but I didn't finish it all. The crew on this flight were pretty attentive and quite friendly and the captain constantly updated us with flight information and weather updates. Meal service was done efficiently with carts rolling from both sides of the aircraft.
A coffee service was conducted after the meal service.
Had to make some use of that cup holder at last.
There wasn't too much going on after the coffee service, I either slept, looked outside the window or browsed through their magazine.
Skylife magazine featuring Durban, South Africa. TK offers 4 weekly flights to DUR via JNB onboard Airbus A330-300 aircraft this winter season.
A very bad picture of TK's fleet. B77W, A343, A333, A332, A321, A320, A319, B739, B738 and B737.
The captain announced our initial descent to Istanbul at approximately 11:00 AM (Turkey time UTC+3).
Slowing down.
A bad shot of Büyükçekmece, a district of Istanbul.
Lining up with runway 05.
Touchdown at 11:38 AM local time, our scheduled time of arrival was 12:10.
Slowing down on this 2580m long runway.
Turkish Airlines A321. The captain thanked us for flying with TK and also announced this being a code-share flight with SAS.
A333.
77W.
Three 330s, two 332s and one 333.
32B.
738.
Mahan Air A310, TK A332.
Turkmenistan Airlines B738.
A332.
B737.
A320.
B738.
A333.
A321.
B739.
AtlasGlobal A321.
Taxiing to our stand.
Turning in to our stand.
We came to a final stop at 11:47 AM local time.
Time to leave TC-JPR.
Unfortunately these shots were very blurry.
We were taken to the terminal with buses.
The bus arrived at the terminal building by 12:02 PM, we were still slightly early.
The left lane was for international transfers and the right one for arrivals and domestic transfer. I stopped before entering any line and so did dad, I told him to head to arrivals just to give it a try. What would we lose if we tried to enter and got denied? We had a connection anyway and it's not like it costs money to wait in line at immigration. He agreed so we walked towards arrivals instead of transfers, a try can't hurt.
First we walked up to a guy at the information desk right before entering the line for immigration, my dad asked him if it was okay to enter Turkey with his passport. He replied with "No problem, no problem. Just wait in line you don't need a Visa". We lined up but were still skeptical about coming through but I still had that little bit of hope inside of me since we departed from Stockholm.
Positive result. My father walked up to the immigration officer and asked if he could enter Turkey, the officer didn't even speak English. He looked at my dad, saw a Swedish passport, gave him a stamp and we were through. I'm not even sure if he understood what my dad was trying to say but we entered Turkey anyway. This immediately improved my mood by a significant amount, it was time to explore Istanbul for a short time before our flight to Vienna would depart at 18:05.
My father exhanged some money at an ATM and we then headed towards the metro station.
The plan, I had already looked up how to get to Sultanahmet where the Blue Mosque is located at (Sultan Ahmet Camii) in order to reduce the amount of wasted time here. This trip involved a metro and tram journey taking around 50 minutes.
Inside the metro train.
Connecting to a tram.
Türkiye'ye hoşgeldiniz! I guess this is the end for this FR. Thank you very much for reading :), have a good one and see you later.
Bonus from Istanbul
Firuz Ağa Mosque (Firuz Ağa Cami).
The Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii).
German Fountain (Alman Çeşmesi).
Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya), Ἁγία Σοφία in Greek.
Gülhane Park (Gülhane Parkı).
Lunch in Istanbul at 15:03 local time.
Thank you for sharing a great FR! :)
I was skeptical when I heard that you booked flights with TK due to bad to decent experiences. I am glad you had a great experience this time!
The queues were pretty long. I remember that I didn't have to wait when I was there. I still like ARN a lot!
Nice spotting at ARN! Love your pics!
No problem for tracking the flight! It has been a pleasure! :)
Wow, you had such a beautiful takeoff with the Stockholm archipelago and sunset! I absolutely enjoyed the archipelago when I flew to ARN!
The catering looks very good!! I'm glad you liked it!!
It seems that you had a great flight, even though the seat pitch wasn't that good!
Amazing bonus from Istanbul!! Thanks a lot for sharing beautiful pics! I
Thank you for your FR again! Can't wait to read your next FRs!
See you! :)
Thank you for your very nice comment :).
Usually it is empty at ARN but it was different this time :).
Thank you very much even though they were very few, glad you liked them even though I didn't haha.
I am glad you enjoyed it!
Catering was definitely excellent with TK, no doubt about that. TK delivers in this department.
Thank you very much! I appreciate it :).
Thanks for stopping by, have a good one and see you later!
Hi RI 777.
"I managed to get a few hours of sleep before getting up at 03:11 AM on Sunday "morning"
- That is just too early for me. Ouch!
"This picture was only taken to remember where we parked our car"
- Smart move. You won't believe how often people tend to forget where they park.
"Banking towards Istanbul with the rising sun."
- Fantastic shot! Sunrises can be so breathtakingly beautiful.
"All in all it was a very good meal with impressive quality as always with TK, bonus points for TK here. Metal cutlery is also nice."
- Food is always good at TK. No surprises here and to be honest I think this is very generous of TK considering that the competition (PC and SK) does not offer any free meals. TK can get away with just serving a cold snack and still would be generous.
Great aerials and spotting shots on arrival in IST.
I'm glad that you and your dad were able to explore IST and see the city. Nice bonus shots and safe travels.
Thank you very much for your nice comment :).
The early-morning shower always make me feel less “dead” at those hours.
“Smart move. You won't believe how often people tend to forget where they park.”
- Thank you! We have always forgotten it in the past so I decided to learn from those mistakes this time around haha.
Thank you for the positive feedback, I really appreciate it :).
“TK can get away with just serving a cold snack and still would be generous.”
- That is definitely true for most cases, good point. However AtlasGlobal has joined the competition on the ARN-IST leg and they also offer a hot meal. I definitely get your point though.
Thank you so much :).
Thanks for stopping by. Have a good one, see you later!
"AtlasGlobal has joined the competition on the ARN-IST leg and they also offer a hot meal. "
- I saw this airline offer some good fares and I was tempted to take it from AMS-IST, but since they were not affiliated with any major alliance and it was relatively new, I decided to go with TK. Maybe in the future.
I understand and as you said, maybe in the future :).
Thanks for sharing this new series RL777!
Flights departing before 7am always mean an early morning, but sometimes that’s better since no one else will be on the road. The downside is that there are a ton of lights leaving during the 5:30-7:30 window and security gets backed up.
Don’t remember seeing that “observation deck” when I was there. I think the windows by duty free are the best spotting place at ARN for clear views.
“Newspapers were available before entering the aircraft if I remember correctly.”
- Should be, I think this is a TK thing.
“my knees kept hitting the seat in front of me”
- Pitch looks okay, but the setback pocket looks very flappy showing that these cabins are getting worn out and need to be replaced with the newer ones with IFE. Never flown on TK long enough to really judge the seat padding for comfort.
Nice sunrise shots rising out of ARN.
The meal looks very good, TK is one of the few airlines that does a good job with breakfast. It’s not the standard rubber eggs and sausage. Quality and quantity both look up to Do&Co standards and more than some carriers offer on TATL flights.
IST is always a bustling airport due to its small land size, there are tons of airplanes parked everywhere. The airport looks just as bustling from your few photos. It’s good that you were able to exploit your nationality to not draw any attention to yourself at immigration. This is how US citizens are normally treated in Europe, they rarely scrutinize our passports and just stamp them.
Nice bonus of Istanbul. I’ve been meaning to go, but the current situation in Turkey means I’ll probably have to wait a couple of years for things to finish stabilizing. Looks like you put in a full day of walking after an early morning flight, must have been tired for the IST-VIE sector!
Thank you very much for your nice comment :).
True!
That so-called “observation deck” was found at the non-Schengen gates 17-24. You have to go through passport control to enter that area. The only airlines using that area are TK. PC, SU, B2, DY (long-haul) and some other ones. Chances of even entering that area is low unless you are flying with one of the specified carriers, your flight departed from the F-gates on the other side of Terminal 5. That “observation deck” is a joke, the other windows are far better for spotting as you said.
TK's cabins in their newer A321s and B738s have far more comfortable seats, their A320s feature the older and dated cabins which feature pretty uncomfortable seats IMO.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it!
Can't complain about TK's catering :).
True, there are even more parked airplanes now after TK's network cuts. A lot of planes that aren't in use. Thanks for sharing that information.
It is probably not recommended to visit with the current situation, I saw some increased security around some places in the city. The day was definitely exhausting but it was still worth it :).
Thanks for stopping by. Have a good one, see you later!
"non-Schengen gates 17-24"
- Oh, okay, so different than the gates that TG/JU use. No wonder why I didn't see it.
Beautiful Trip Report with lovely photos and facts.
How odd that Turkish A320 aircrafts don't offer personal or seatback video screens.
Is it true that Turkish do not hand out Turkish Delight or menucards in Economy Class anymore ?
Thanks for an anazing review ! It would be nice if there was a LIKE button or traffic light system with each report on FR showing how much a reader has enjoyed the read !
Thank you very much for your nice comment :).
Yeah their A320s are definitely getting old. Their newer A321s are great though and have nice IFE systems.
That is very true, they have stopped doing that now.
Thank you very much :). I appreciate the support, it means a lot to me. It seems like there is one now :).
I am sorry for the unprofessional writing on one of my previous QR reports, I changed that after your comment.
Thanks for stopping by.
Have a good one, see you!
"It would be nice if there was a LIKE button" : now it's nice : Flight Report has added this feature. Guess who was first to Like this report ? ;)
Thank you very much, really kind of you!
Plenty of countries require 6 months passport extra validity; lots of travelers are caught unaware by this stupid requirement according to my favorite travel website. Great that they did not check this at the immigration, you made good use of these few hours in the city.
Quite decent night shots once seated in your plane !
Great shot of ARN at dawn after takeoff !
Belated thanks for this report :)
Thank you for your very nice comment :).
True. I believe a decent amount of countries enforce that rule in Asia, South America and Africa. The rule of course also exists in some other places, always good to check these rules before heading to a different country. Thanks, guess it would have been a complete denial if we did not have a connecting flight to VIE!
Thank you for the comments :).
Thanks for stopping by!
Have a good one, see you later.