Changed to older plane with old set-up in Business class.
I had issue with my boarding pass. When I arrived in London Gatwick Airport. My e-ticket wasn't scanning and had to do a lot of back and forth with Air Transit I order to board my flight, which I almost missed as a result of this.
PLEASE GIVRE US PERMISSION TO BOOK SEAT NUMBER EVEN WITH FEES
Very good overall.... apart from the cost of extra check ed in luggage where they charge £17 per kg, and no option to just buy an extra bag allowance (at least on the route I took)
Stale, bad and limited food, drink options. Entertainment system was broken, old and had barely any latest contents.
Very bad I have traveled to about 70 countries. And this is one of the worst airline with the bad customer service. As a family We purchased our seating tickets 8 D, 8 E, and 8 F but when we board we got switched to 10 A, 10 B and C without early acknowledgment. The seat back doesn’t even go back because the back row is the emergency row. We didn’t like it at all because we actually pay for the seats we want then the manager Melih came and say either we take the new seat or get off the plane. What a bad customer service. He was saying things that are not even legitimate. Due to the seat back unable to be push back we had to go to other seats in the far back and be separated. Very bad experience with this airline and will not want to take it again.
On this route the plane was also late and I almost missed a connecting flight to Tashkent. Moreover, my bag did not arrive with the same plane and only on the next flight from Istanbul. I was supposed to travel further from Tashkent to Astana and Saudi Arabia and if I didn't collect my bag in Tashkent I would have missed the next flights because I couldn't travel without my bag and all valuables inside it.
The seat did not recline and we called the stewardess, he forced it to recline, but when we landed, it did not come forward because the seat was broken. The stewardess came, He tried to do it but couldn't do it, the flight commander came and spoke to us in a bad tone, telling us to get out of here, she waited at the head and acted as if there was a child and we couldn't get up, it was very shameful, I don't even know if it's true, but she said if you don't get up, the plane will not land and will keep turning around. Then a passenger pushed the seat from behind and it worked. Then we wanted to talk to the supervisor again, but she did not come next to us. We fly so much and this is the first time we encountered such a style.
It was a nightmare. I booked business class ticket from Ediburgh to Beirut via Istanbul to attend a funeral. I had a wonderful experience flying to Istanbul from Edinburgh. Then I could not get a boarding pass issued to Beirut. It seems that although they booked me and I had a reservation number, I had no seat allocated and the flight was full. I was asked to go from one desk to another and made to wait for 2 hours. I missed my flight as I did not have a seat assigned and it was full. The only option was to put me on the next flight, 6 hours later, for a fee of over $400. They said that was the best they can do to 'help me' and to 'take it or leave it'. Well, I was not about to be bullied; I stood my ground. I booked and paid premium for the journey, which was confirmed. The eventually accepted to not charge me extra and i waited a total of over 8 hours in the airport with no compensation. On top of my grief with the risk of missing the funeral service, I had to put up with their indifference and condescending attitude. They spoke about me in Turkish thinking I would not understand (I hold a British passport) in front of me. When they eventually handed my passport and boarding pass back to me, I showed them I was born in Istanbul and that I understood everything and said a condescending 'thank you' back to them in Turkish. You should have seen their faces. I said that consumers have rights and it is a shame that Turkish Airlines does not have good customer service to at least acknowledge and apologize for errors committed by the airline. Blaming the me, the client, for such an error and placing unreasonable ultimatums, rudeness and dismissiveness to be rid of me, particularly when I was vulnerable and visibly grieving was really shocking... The airline taints the city of Istanbul and the people of Türkiye. Such a shame.
My flight from Washington, DC to Istanbul was close to excellent. However, my Turkish flight from Istanbul to Johannesburg South Africa was outrageously horrible. The flight was delayed three times and we did not get proper notification of the delays. We then missed our connecting flight in Johannesburg and right now we are struggling to get reimbursement for the overnight hotel cost that we had to then incur in Johannesburg and the new flight tickets that we had to purchase as a result of delays
