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YOUTUBE: United Airlines: San Francisco (SFO) to Paris (CDG)
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Paris (CDG) to Istanbul (IST)
YOUTUBE: Pegasus Airlines: Istanbul (SAW) to Kayseri (ASR)
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Nevsehir (NAV) to Istanbul (IST)
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Istanbul to Chicago (ORD)
After my previous flight was delayed by 3.5 hours, I was rushing to make it to my connecting flight to Istanbul, which was on time.
Turkish Airlines has this weird thing where sometimes they have boarding set for a whole hour before departure but the boarding doesn’t actually start for a while. This was indeed the case here.
Turkish has multiple flights a day from many major European cities to Istanbul including Paris. Thankfully this flight is an A330 where other frequencies are narrowbodies so at least we have a more comfortable flight.
Boarding is supposed to be zone based, but in reality it was separated into 2 just 2 simple lines: Business Class/Star Gold and Economy class. Thankfully I was able to join the former line due to my Star Alliance Gold status through United.
CDG-IST
A330-200
29 April 2023
A330s are always nice in economy class, given the cozy 2-4-2 layout.
My seat for this flight was the bulkhead row 8. The seats are narrow but still alright for a flight of this length. I never liked the slimline seats that are more popular today since they have much less cushioning than the other seats. But airlines can fit more of these in a plane, so it helps with revenue.
Every seat came with a pair of reusable earphones and a pillow, which is honestly all that’s needed for a 2.5 hour flight.
There’s a power port between each pair of seats, which is great, but it’s always interesting sharing it when your seat neighbor isn’t someone you know.
But every seat’s in flight entertainment does come with a USB-A port, so if you have a device that uses this, you can still charge your device using this.
Every seat also has a coat hook. At the bulkhead row, there’s more space, however at non-bulkhead rows, you’ll find this coat hook on the back of the seat itself.
We had begun boarding almost an hour late, but we boarded the whole plane within about 25 minutes and closed the door.
We pushed back and made our taxi out towards runway 8L for departure.
Check out this Air France Concorde as we were taxiing out.
We taxied by some pretty cool traffic.
The views were nice as we climbed through the clouds and made our way out on the other side.
There was wifi onboard this flight and the price depends on a lot of factors.
If you are a business class passenger, or have a voucher, or are a member of Turkish Airlines miles & smiles.
However if you are neither of the above, then here’s the rates for the wifi, which honestly are whatever. For a 2.5 hour flight, these aren’t anything crazy but not awful. Often times, for data usage-based rates, you use a lot of that data allowance in your devices just loading notifications.
This is economy class, so there’s not some crazy elaborate service when it comes to this flight, however the crew did come around with the lunch cart pretty shortly after.
The choices were “beef or pasta,” and I went with beef. I was excited for this meal, even though it’s an economy class meal, because Turkish has a stellar reputation when it comes to inflight catering because of their catering provider DO&CO.
And the lunch certainly looked inviting.
The main course was delicious. The beef was juicy, and very flavorful. Even the rice had a little bit of seasoning to it. The vegetables consisted of eggplants, tomatoes, and squash, all of which were very tasty.
Everything about this dish was good from a health standpoint; I was delighted.
The appetizer was a green beans dish which was savory and drenched in a tangy sauce. Green beans are otherwise a bland vegetable but this dish was also tasty.
Dessert was a blueberry pudding of sorts and it was absolutely delicious. It had the sweetness as expected and a touch of tanginess that blueberries can have, and overall, this was delicious.
The crew also came around with bread for every passenger which was fine.
While I was eating, I caught some views of the Swiss Alps outside.
The crew eventually cleared all our trays and came around with tea and coffee for all passengers after.
We were also crossing through the Balkan countries and below we are flying just south of Zagreb in Croatia.
2.5 hours went by faster than I realized and we were crossing through Bulgaria and beginning our descent into Turkey.
Finally, we came around and were descending into Istanbul just off the western part of Istanbul.
After touching down on runway 34L, which is one of the furthest runways you could land at at the new IST, we had a long taxi to the gate.
Istanbul Airport is massive, maybe a little too massive, but it makes sense given Turkish Airline’s impressive route network.
Overall, this was a great flight. The seats were fine, there were power ports and USB ports, there was wifi for all passengers, and the food was excellent. For quick hops from Europe to Istanbul, there are many airlines that fly but there should be no question that Turkish is the way to go.