Review of Turkish Airlines flight from Athens to Istanbul in Economy

A visual of my nonstop flight from Athens, Greece to Istanbul, Turkey which would cover a short distance of 345mi/556km. 

Athens, Greece 🇬🇷

We are starting off from here in the magnificent city of Athens! Me and my mom had an absolutely great time here. Here's a collage of photos on the highlights of our trip. 

We got to visit many amazing archeological sites including the world famous Acropolis of Athens which is an absolute must see when you're here.

When visiting the Acropolis of Athens I highly recommend dedicating one entire day to this site if possible to better appreciate the history and the detail to design the ancient Greeks had and still do to this day (these pictures to do it justice).

My favorite part of visiting new places is finding spots to hike up to and have unique view points of the city like these ones.

My mom couldn't help herself 😅.

introduction

Let's continue with the trip report 😉.
It is travel day and I'm preparing to leave to the airport via public metro for my relatively early morning flight to Istanbul with Turkish Airlines. This would be my first time traveling with them and I'm excited to see first hand what the service will be like. Although my expectation are initially set low since it would be just under an hour flight but stay tuned to see how wrong I was. I booked this trip as round trip with TK as my departing flight back to the US will be out of Athens. Despite this being a short one hour hop to Istanbul, fares between the two cities are other than cheap and consistently quite expensive throughout the year based on my research. I paid 240 USD p/p RT which for an hour flight (and no checked luggage included) in my opinion is not necessarily a good value but what can you do. The second cheapest option at 220 USD was with Pegasus Airlines but that fare only included one cabin bag allowance versus 2 with TK so decided to pay a little extra and fly with TK.
   

metro to airport

I made my way from my airbnb in Neo Cosmos to the metro station to take the public train to the airport. This is my second time visiting Athens and I find taking the metro the best and affordable option to get from the city center to airport.

You'll need to purchase a special airport ticket which costs 10 euros each way p/p and requires just one transfer at Syntagma station.

About an hour and twenty minutes later we arrived at the airport station. 

From here it's pretty straight forward and you just follow the signs (or crowd) towards the main airport terminal.

You then have to cross the street before finally arriving at departures hall.

arrival at airport

There were a lot of people when I arrived into the airport. Since this was the first day of December there were some decorations on display for the upcoming Christmas holiday. 

My flight is TK 1844 with a scheduled 9:50a departure. 

I found the TK check-in desks, however, I did not need to see an agent as I had already checked in online. I was quite disappointed to later find out that my fare did not include a checked bag allowance. Could be since it was an 'inter European' flight therefore it's considered a domestic or national flight with no allowances vs an actual international one. For some reason I simply had the illusion that all TK flights included at least one free baggage included, welp it's good to know now for next time.   

Next off to security control.

Security control was comically slow. There was almost no one in line and the security personnel were seriously taking their very sweet time screening one passenger at a time as if we were a bother to them. Definitely didn't experience this when I came earlier this year. All in all it took about 30 minutes to make it airside.
As with all European airports, there was a very large duty free area you must walk through before getting to the gate area.  

In addition, since we are in Europe, gate assignments are not shown or announced pretty much until right before boarding starts which is annoying. Luckily though through the windows of the departure area I could see the tail of my aircraft at gate A3 which is where I suspect I'll be departing from.

aircraft

Here's my B777-300ER that'll be taking me on this short hop to Istanbul this morning.

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: TK 1844
Aircraft: Boeing 777-3F2(ER)
Registration: TC-JJE
Delivered: Oct. 13, 2010 
Age: 13 years (at time of flight)

This aircraft is configured in 49 business and 300 regular economy class seats for a total capacity of 349 seats. For this flight I was assigned 31D an aisle seat and my mom 31E. Unfortunately I could not change my seat to a window seat at the airport as the flight was completely sold out. So aisle seat will have to do 😅. My ticket also did not include complimentary seat assignment but at lest TK sat me and my mom together. 

This is the best view I could get of my aircraft until I got to Istanbul. 

A look at the gate area just before boarding.

boarding

Boarding started promptly and TK has a unique boarding system for economy class. After business class group, the gate agents starts to call  boarding for economy class based on a number of rows at a time, from front to back. 

At the boarding door, a friendly FA greeted us and took a look at our boarding pass before directing us down the first aisle. Here's a look at the business class which looks quite nice and spacious. Definitely don't need this much space though on this hour long flight like this one 😅.

seat

Here are our assigned seats towards the middle of the aircraft, 31D and E. Its nice to see TK decided to keep the 3-3-3 configuration on their 777s which made it feel a bit spacious while most airlines opted to cram more seats into their 777s with the dreaded 3-4-3 abreast in economy class.

Waiting at each seat was a plush pillow which was very nice to see.

Each seat is provided with a nice size PTV. 

There is also a control to control the PTV should you not want to touch the screen.

The legroom room situation is pretty good for economy class standard. These seats offer 31" of pitch and an impressive 6" of recline.

The tray table folds out and is extendable.

The literature pocket only consisted of the safety card.

The view from my seat.

There is a usb port, although I can't recall if there were universal power outlet at each seat.  

The PTV had a decent array of entertainment options albeit it was mostly Turkish series/movies then western. 

Although my favorite part of any entertainment system would have to be the moving map. TK's moving map was quite limited it was not interactive unlike on other airlines.

The overhead panel consisted of only an individual reading light and surprisingly no individual air vents. The FA call button was located on the controller.

An FA came through the cabin offering complimentary headphones. Although not as nice at the headphones provided in DL economy class IMO.

Last passengers are now boarding. As mentioned before this will be a completely full flight up to Istanbul this morning.

Shortly after the safety video began playing. TK is the only airline I personally seen to have a separate sign langauge safety video along with English and Turkish. 

We eventually took off and found the video monitors at the front of the cabin showing exterior camera shots on takeoff which was cool to see. Since I've never sat in the middle section of the aircraft before (especially on a wide body), it was actually quite quiet compared to sitting next to the window.   

15 minutes into flight the FA's wasted no time and sprang into the cabin to conduct the service. To my delight there will be an actual breakfast service on this short one hour hop.

breakfast service

The breakfast was served in a cardboard tray.

It contained an entree (which consisted of turkey, cheese wedges, cucumber and olives), a bread roll (cold), a small container of water…

…and for desert a small piece of almond cake.

Shortly after the drink cart came through with a choice of drink and I went for a coke. 

The entree was quite tasty. Definitely different from an American standpoint what would be considered as breakfast 😅 but delicious nonetheless. 

All in all a very good breakfast!

Right as the trays were cleared, we had begun our initial descent into Istanbul. This was an insanely short flight and wished it could of been longer.

Cabin was prepared for landing.

landing

Later I found out that everyone had the exterior camera feature available at their PTV. TK is also the only airline that I know of that has this feature fitted into their B777's which as an avgeek myself I greatly appreciate this feature.

We'd be landing on runway 17L this morning.

arrival at gate

Welcome to Istanbul 🇹🇷!

A few last pictures of my B777-300ER (TC-JJE), thanks for the fun and safe ride!

This concludes the trip report, thanks for reading!