Review of Freebird Airlines flight from London to Antalya in Economy

low cost business

Hello and welcome to another brand-new series!

This series will cover a recent trip to Turkey with family, involving a countless number of flights (nine to be exact). However, I'll only be writing FRs for six of them, mainly because domestic flying in Turkey often involves the same airline with similar experiences. 

We'll kick things off with a flight to Antalya on Freebird Airlines. They're a small leisure airline based in Antalya and operate a small fleet of Airbus A320 to destinations around Europe. There are a lot of leisure airlines based in Turkey because of its attractiveness to tourists around the world. For the price, I paid €103 (yeah, I have no idea why Euros are used for a flight from the UK to Turkey…), which was the upgraded 'SmartBird' fare, featuring seat selection, checked baggage, and a hot meal. It's around €35 extra, which is absolutely worth it in my opinion, as you'll see later. 

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.

Video report

Here's the video version of this FR, it's got pretty much the same thing content wise. 

London Gatwick Airport (LGW)

Despite the many, many times I've flown in (and out) of here, I've written a surprisingly low number of FRs departing out of here (by 'low' I mean… none). Hilariously, LGW is my most reviewed airport at 6 FRs, which are all arrivals. I have no idea how that happened. 

Anyway, here's the check-in area of the North Terminal. This is the upstairs area, the downstairs portion is used mainly by easyJet (and Air Transat, for some reason). 

Queueing for check-in. 

And here's the departures area outside… it was only after I checked in that I realized I didn't take any photos before that point. What can I say? It's been a few months since I flew so I had to get back into the habit I guess. ;)

The shuttle linking the North and South terminals can be seen on the left. 

Security took around 5 minutes and here's the duty-free area. 

And here's the departures area with the airport using the hated call-to-gate (or guess-the-gate) system. 

And, to the surprise of absolutely no one, it's absolutely packed.

I've flown out of here 5 times before and despite that, I never realized there's an entire upstairs area, which was a nice excuse for me to get out of the waiting area. Here's a photo of departures from above. 

Yeah, I tried blurring out all the faces but that's kinda not possible unless you just blur the entire photo. 

There's some more seating and more restaurants up here but like the rest of the airport, it's very packed. 

Unlike the South Terminal, where planes park in somewhat predictable places, the North Terminal has no such system (at least that I know of), turning the already challenging game of guess-the-gate into roulette instead. For those who don't know, it's a mini-game I like to play in the UK where I leave departures before my gate is announced and 'guess' the area where the plane will depart. It's a way of escaping the crowd in the departures area and I like to think I'm quite good at it these days. 

Anyway, here's the gate area. I was one of the first to arrive thanks to my 'strategic' placement - I pretend it's strategic but it's just dumb luck this time ;) 

View of the apron. 

See that green 777 in the distance? That's a Turkmenistan Airlines Boeing 777-300ER heading to Ashgabat (ASB). I had no clue the airline was flying to Gatwick so that caught me completely by surprise. The only reason I managed to catch her is because she's around 2 hours late. 

And here's our plane arriving from Antalya. It's the best photo I can get sadly. 

Some information about our plane:

Type: Airbus A320
Registration: TC-FHL
First flight: 4 December 2009
Age: ~15 years
Config: Y180

An Airbus A320 formerly belonging to Chinese carrier Juneyao Airlines before arriving in Freebird's fleet in August 2022. 

the flight

Flight time today will be around 4 hours and here's our route. 

Boarding started 1 hour late. This is presumably due to the late arrival of our plane. I say presumably because there was absolutely no information regarding the delay. All the departure boards was saying on time so they just made people sit there for like 1 hour 30 minutes. 

Anyway, here are the ironing board seats onboard. 

The seatback pocket and tray table. 

Thanks to the slim seats, the legroom is alright at best. 

It's just a standard LCC seat, which is fine for a 1 or 2 hour flight but it's honestly not good enough for a carrier that often flies 3+ hours from Turkey to Europe. 

Unlike most LCCs however, these seats at least recline. 

First views out of the window with the (somewhat iconic) bridge in the distance. 

Pushback 1 hour late, as predicted. 

Nice view of the apron as we taxi out with an Air India Boeing 787-8 arriving from Ahmedabad (AMD), the delayed Turkmenistan Airlines Boeing 777 that I mentioned earlier and an Air Europa Boeing 737-800 to Madrid (MAD).

Another view of the apron with a Norse Atlantic Boeing 787-9 heading to New York (JFK). The Norse FR was my 2nd ever on the site and the Air Europa was my 4th. It gave me a ton of nostalgia (and cringe…) reading those back, although I'm very grateful for this site for giving me a reason to document my trips in such detail. However, when I think back to those trips, the first thing that always comes up are the stupid mistakes (such as almost missing my outbound flight to Oslo). 

Anyway, enough reminiscing. We were (thankfully) allowed to cut the queue at Gatwick due to our delay, much to the dismay of the passengers on the other easyJets, I can imagine. 

Takeoff! Bye-bye, England! 

Not a whole lot to see as we climb through the clouds. 

Somewhere over Belgium. 

Lets have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes a safety card…

… an air sickness bag…

… and no buy onboard menu. It was given out separately by the crew - I find the prices to be reasonable. 

As I mentioned in the introduction, I paid for the upgraded fare, which includes a hot meal. There's a wide selection to choose from online if you do pick this fare. 

It's so colorful! I picked the Chicken Biryani with rice. It includes a chocolate cheesecake, feta cheese salad (under the white label), and two (yes, TWO!) buns. Along with that, there was a container with cheese, salt, pepper, and a cute bottle of olive oil with lemon sauce (the green one). A selection of tea, coffee, or water is also available. 

I'd say this is on par with what you'd get on a European business class flight (at least on something like British Airways) and for just €35 extra (which also includes 23kg checked baggage and free seat selection) this is absolutely amazing value for money. Seat selection also includes the front 7-8 rows (which costs extra). This means that while the back is almost full, I had the entire row to myself. For just €35, I'd highly recommend it for anyone flying with them. 

Cruising over a thick layer of clouds…

… and more clouds.

The clouds finally starting to break somewhere over the Balkans

A rather unspectacular sunset with more clouds… *sigh* this has turned into a rather boring flight with all the clouds. 

Descending into Antalya with a view of the airport (those really bright lights). We flew a massive downwind leg (basically away from the airport, parallel to the runway) - I'd guess for around 15 miles. That only happens when the airport is really busy. I saw 5 planes on final in that time. 

But finally, welcome to Turkey! Due to our late departure, we parked at the gate around 1 hour late. 

Antalya Airport (ayt)

Walking to immigration, which you can see ahead. Despite the huge number of people, it went really quickly (literally 2 minutes). This is mainly due to the officer's absolute lack of care - they basically had a look at my passport for a second, flicked to the first page and just slapped a stamp over two existing ones. I guess it gets pretty monotonous when you see hundreds of European tourists a day. 

View of the (fairly crowded) baggage reclaim area. 

And here's the arrivals area outside. Buses and taxis can be found on the right. 

I'm actually not staying here in Antalya - I went here purely to fly Freebird (I mean, are you even surprised at this point?). I'll be taking a redeye flight to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. Despite our delay, I still have 3 hours until my flight. It was like midnight and in my half-asleep status, I walked right back into the international terminal (Terminal 2) and, to my utter shock and surprise, couldn't find my domestic flight there.

Photo of the international terminal. 

After a mild panic, I realized that domestic flights depart out of Terminal 1, a full 30-minute walk away. Obviously, I'm not gonna walk that in the middle of the night, so I got a taxi, who asked for €10 for a 3-minute drive (due to a €7 toll… which is blatantly false). I eventually bargained it down to 200TL (€5.70), which was still a crazy amount but there's not a whole lot you can do at 1 AM. But at least they drop you off in the right location after scamming you, which is a lot better than taxis in India (contrary to belief, I do love India, just not the scamming culture there). 

Anyway, I'll end this FR here. There'll be a few FRs in Turkey coming up. Thank you very much for reading and I'll see you there!!