Review of Turkish Airlines flight from Hong Kong to Istanbul in Economy

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 3rd series of the trip to Asia with Turkish Airlines. This report will cover the leg from Hong Kong to Istanbul.

I arrived at Hong Kong International Airport at 21:26pm. The check-in counters of Turkish Airlines are located in aisle D and when I got there it was so empty. 

When I reached the gate at 22:10pm, the preparation for boarding had begun and the people were already queuing in front of the gate. At that moment I looked at the boarding pass again and instantly reminded me that Turkish Airlines's boarding was commenced one hour before the departure, not the usual 30 minutes standard. Our plane for the flight back to Istanbul, TC-JJO which carries the name Istanbul, was delivered to Turkish Airlines in August 2011. The B777-300ER of Turkish Airlines gas only one configuration with 49 seats in business class and 300 seats in economy class.

Boarding was called 4 minutes later. My seat was 55K which was in the same row as my outbound flight from Istanbul, just on the opposite side. Pillow, blanket, headset and the amenity kit were placed already on the seat.

View of the cabin during boarding.

Back of the economy seat

View out of aircraft from my seat.

At 22:43pm, boarding was completed and the safety video was shown.

Pushback was started at 23:13pm and I switched to the flight camera mode on the screen. A man was sitting besides me. The loading was quite full and there were a few tourist groups on this plane.

Then I took a chance to look at the amenity kits. This was the exactly the same one I received in 2016, the content inside the bag was the same which I had already described in the outbound flight report before.

10 minutes after takeoff, menu was distributed.

A few minutes later I start watching the movie, Shazam!

Another 20 minutes later, dinner was served. I opted for the chicken option with orange juice. The main dish was quite good but the side dishes were definitely not my favorite.

At 1:33am, the cabin light was turned off, and about 15 minutes before, a bottle of water was distributed. As I finished the first movie, I checked the flightmap and we were flying probably over Myanmar.

Soon I began to feel a little bit sleepy and I slept for about 2 hours and 40 minutes. When I woke up, we were flying over Afghanistan.

Then I watched the second movie of the flight, X-Men: Apocalypse.

In the middle of the movie, I fell asleep for about 15 minutes. The cabin illuminated by the blue mood-lighting when I woke up.

At 8:06am, breakfast was served and I selected the scrambled eggs with tomato and mushrooms. I had an orange juice for the drink.

After breakfast, I visited the lavatory at the back.

Cabin view of the rear cabin.

At 9:18am, announcement from the cockpit that the landing would be in approximately 40 minutes. Seatbelt sign was then turned on. As we can see from the flightmap, our plane made several holding patterns in the east of Istanbul before we descent into the city. The route was also different from the outboard flight, we flew through South East Asian and Middle East instead of the Northern part of China and Russia.

I had a very good view of the Istanbul city during descend.

The old Istanbul Atatürk Airport. From April 2019 onwards, the airport is only handing cargo flights.

At 5:06am local time, we touched down on RWY35R. Total flight time was 10 hours and 38 minutes. After a short taxi, we parked at gate F12.