Review of Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Ercan in Economy

interesting plane, fascinating place

Hello and welcome to another Flight Report!

This is the 3rd FR from Turkey and is the highlight of the entire trip. But first, a brief rundown of the history behind this route and our destination. 

Ercan Airport is located in the de-facto state of Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (or TRNC for short). The history behind the formation of the state is complicated but in short, Northern Cyprus is recognized only by Turkey with all other countries recognizing the area controlled by the TRNC as being part of the Republic of Cyprus (ROC). Despite that, the TRNC is very much a separate entity from the ROC with a UN buffer zone separating the two. Ercan Airport is Northern Cyprus' primary civilian airport opened by Turkey in 2004 and as part of an international embargo, international flights from anywhere other than Turkey are banned. Also because of that embargo, you won't see any international brands there, making it a very unique place. 

The legality of the airport is also questionable. Since the ROC claims the entire island and views the Turkish 'occupation' as illegal, entering Cyprus via Ercan is seen as having entered the island illegally. Those who have done so may be fined and/or be refused entry into the ROC. I've got no idea how strictly that is enforced and I've also read that they cannot deny entry for EU nationals. But to be safe, I highly recommend against entering the ROC with a Northern Cyprus stamp in your passport, especially as a non-EU national. 

Anyway, enough on history and politics (and acronyms…), let's turn our focus to this flight in particular. I really wanted to fly this route because of its uniqueness and history. For some reason Turkish flies an A350 here almost daily, I have no idea where the demand is coming from, especially with so many airlines flying the route (it's one of the only major destinations they can serve). Maybe I'm underestimating the popularity of Northern Cyprus, especially as a summer vacation destination for Turks. As for the price, I paid 3000TR ($90/€83), which is standard for the route. 

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.

istanbul airport (ist)

Istanbul airport is served by the brand new Line 11 of the metro. It takes 40 minutes to get to the airport, although with only 3 trains an hour, you'll probably be spending quite a while sitting bored in the station. With my terrible luck (no surprises there) I sat here for 18 minutes… with no signal on my phone. So… yeah. I got to know this random station very very well. ;) 

But finally, after what felt like a lifetime, we're here at the airport. Departures is upstairs. 

It's a pretty impressive airport, I have to admit. 

And here's the check-in area. Reminds me of Shenzhen Bao'an Airport, it's probably because of all the flags everywhere. 

The business class check-in for Turkish is located in a separate area from the rest. 

There are also some 24hr stores so you won't go hungry if you're planning on staying here overnight. 

This airport is soooo photogenic, which I love. 

Check-in, security and immigration took very little time (it's 2AM, which explains a lot) and we're through to the massive airside area. 

Departures for the morning. Tukey is one of very few countries where flights legitimately does not shut down overnight. I know most international airports are open 24 hours, but they often have little to no flights past midnight. That is not the case in Turkey, where even smaller airports like Antalya (and yes, Ercan) sees plenty of international and domestic flights deep into the night. 

Also a 10 hour 50 minute delay for the Sochi flight?? Ouch! 

There's an absolute ton of duty-free stores, rivalling that of Abu Dhabi. 

It must've taken me over 15 minutes to walk from one side to the other. 

With my Dragonpass, I get free entry to the iGA Lounge. It's huge, as you can see in the photo. 

However, despite its massive size, there's a very limited selection of food. (The area might be huge, as you can see on the right, but it's like 4-5 counters of the same thing). 

After around 1 hour in the lounge, it's time to head to the gate. 

The flight

Flight time today will only be 1 hour and here's our route:

Here's our plane at the gate. Sadly, this photo was the best I can do as the gate on the left was fenced off for a flight heading to Chicago (ORD) (y'know… American security stuff.) 

Some information about our plane:

Type: Airbus A350-900
Registration: TC-LGU
First flight: 17 May 2024
Age: ~1.5 months
Config: C21/Y297

A brand new A350 delivered to Turkish Airlines on 15th June, 10 days earlier.

The seats onboard. 

The IFE (which we'll definitely look at later) and tray table. 

On each seat is a pillow and headphones, which is amazing for a 1 hour flight. 

The legroom is also quite good. 

First views out of the window. It's hard to believe but this is my first flight on the A350. I have no idea how it's avoided me for this long - I've not been purposefully avoiding the type, I swear! 

Pushback 5 minutes early. 

View of the terminal with a million Turkish planes. 

But finally! A plane without a red tail! Here's a China Southern A330-300 heading to Beijing (PKX)

Takeoff! Bye bye Turkey (for now). 

Not much to see as we do a 180° to head South towards Cyprus…

… which means overflying the entirety of Istanbul. The old Atatürk Airport can be seen on the bottom. 

Lets have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes an air sickness bag… 

And a safety card, no inflight magazine sadly. 

A ton of clouds over Northern Turkey today. 

Lets have a look at this very new IFE system. Like Saudia's new A321neos, it has a double jack headphone port but the headphones given out are single jack ones. A USB-C and USB-A charging port is provided. 

As expected, it's a very fast and responsive system with a ton of content, 688 movies and 1699 TV programs to be exact. 

And as a bonus, (working) cameras are also available!! I can't remember the last time I had these. It must've been on Finnair's old A330s ages ago haha. 

A fully interactive map is also available. 

Clouds finally starting to break as we near Turkey's southern coast. 

Although I do love the wing view of the A350, I prefer the look of the winglet-less wing of the 777. I don't know why… 

More mountains somewhere in Southern Turkey.

Let's have a look at the onboard Wi-Fi. 

Prices are… we'll say they're more catered towards long hauls. I doubt anyone will pay $15 for unlimited internet on a 1 hour flight.  

More views of… Turkey. In case it's not obvious, my geographical knowledge of Turkey is severely lacking haha.

The crew also came around with a hot chicken sandwich and some water shortly after. As I mentioned in the last FR, the catering is very good on short/medium haul flight, at least compared to other airlines in Europe. 

First views of Cyprus as we start our descent. 

Welcome to Northern Cyprus! We arrived on time. 

Parked at the gate. 

ercan international airport (ecn)

The new terminal here at Ercan opened sometime in 2023 (I think) so it's very new. 

It's clearly built to handle a lot more flights than what it's getting currently, most likely in preparation for when/if the embargos are lifted and it's able to receive flights from places other than Turkey. 

Immigration took around 10 minutes with only 4 counters open and here's baggage reclaim. 

And here's the arrivals area outside. Yeah, it's a chaotic mess here in complete contrast to the terminal. There's a bus stop on the left with minivans leaving for Nicosia (Lefkosa) and Kyrenia (Girne).

I'll end this FR here. There's a tourism bonus of my 3 days here in Northern Cyprus - obviously I couldn't go to the ROC as I mentioned in the intro so I'll have to fly back to Turkey from here. That will be the next FR in this series. Thanks for reading and see you there!!