Review: United Polaris Lounge San Francisco SFO
Review: United 777-200ER Polaris Business Class San Francisco SFO to Paris CDG
Review: Turkish Airlines A330-300 Economy Class Paris CDG to Istanbul IST
Review: Pegasus Airlines A320-200 Economy Class Istanbul SAW to Kayseri ASR
Trip Photos: A Week in Istanbul and Cappadocia
Review: Turkish A321-200 Economy Class Nevsehir NAV to Istanbul IST
Review: Turkish Airlines Business Class Lounge Istanbul IST
Review: Turkish Airlines 777-300ER Business Class Istanbul IST to Chicago ORD
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)
Welcome to Kapadokya Havalimani, aka Cappadocia Airport, located a little outside Nevsehir. When traveling to/from the Cappadocia region, you generally have 2 choices of airports to fly in and out of: The larger and more popular Kayseri (ASR), or the smaller but much closer Nevsehir (NAV). We flew into the former airport in the previous installment, and now we are flying out of Nevsehir.
This airport is just about as big as an American grocery store, but it surely packs a punch.
There’s a security check just to enter the airport, but once in, you can see the departure board, and particularly how spaced out the flights are. Let me tell you, this airport may have 5-6 gates, but it might as well not because it can realistically only handle one flight at a time.
The Turkish check-in lane was packed, however there was a priority lane for business and star alliance gold status that I was able to use due to my Star Alliance gold status through United. But it honestly did not make a difference because it was so slow.
The security line was packed and slow-moving, and boarding had even started for this flight while most passengers were still making their way through security. Once through security you are in this small room which is just a little bigger than a bus stop. It was very crowded with little room to stand and forget sitting. This airport is as chaotic as it could get. There was no priority enforcement for boarding it was just a “everyone at once” festival.
Boarding was all bus gates which was neat as I got some cool views of our Turkish plane taking us to Istanbul.
This was an all economy plane with as bare-bone seats as you could’ve asked for. If you didn’t show me the outside and asked me to guess what airline this was based off the seats, I would’ve started rattling through all the low-cost carriers. Thankfully this flight was a short hour long flight so I didn’t really mind.
Naturally, the seat was thin and hard, but had an interesting contour shape that kind of took the shape of your back, so there wasn’t as much pressure on my back.
This is what the legroom was like, and for reference, I’m 5′ 10″ (1.78m). I thought it was pretty decent.
The tray table can easily be released with the standard latch that you just turn to the side.
The tray table was an easy release and had sufficient space for most things you’d want to place on it.
There were no power ports or USB ports as you’d expect, this seat is as bare bones as it got.
The engine views from this seat were great.
Eventually we pushed back and taxiied to the end of the singular runways.
We could get a clear view of Mount Erciyes from here which is pretty cool considering how far away it is. Mount Erciyes is very close to Kayseri so this is much more accessible from there for a visit.
Nevsehir Airport does not have a taxiway to connect the ends of the runway, so you actually have to taxi along the runway itself. Once you get to the end, there’s a road cutout that allows you to do an assisted U-turn, or backtracking as the maneuver is called.
We began out takeoff roll and jetted out of the Turkish country side.
I know I’m just showing a lot of countryside pictures, but it genuinely was pretty nice, and I thought it would be cool to see some of those views from the climb out.
I was surprised to even see that there was service for this flight, but I have to remind my American brain that this is not the US and airlines are happy to serve something more than just pretzels for short flights.
The service included a hot sandwich and a drink of choice. I wanted to try my luck with pomegranate juice given how popular is it throughout turkey but they didn’t have it so I just stuck with Orange Juice.
The sandwich was a hot egg, tomato, and cheese sandwich and it was really good. It’s a packaged sandwich I mean how good is it even supposed to be but it was quite nice and flavorful. Given who Turkish’s catering provider is I can’t be all that surprised.
There wasn’y much of a service aspect otherwise for the flight given the flight length as well as the fact that this was economy class, but it was perfectly fine flight in any case.
Eventually we did begin our descent into Istanbul.
We were cloud surfing for a while and eventually began a proper descent down underneath into Istanbul.
A normal approach path into the new IST airport takes you right over what was the original Ataturk international airport and so we were treated to nice views of that through the clouds.
We eventually began our final approach and landed into IST.
A rare piece of traffic we taxiied by was a Mahan Air A340-600 which I really don’t get to see all that much so it was cool to capture this.
Overall, this was a short, but very good flight. Turkish served hot food on this hour long flight, and it was delicious. The service was fine, the seats were ok for a flight of this length. In this day and age, power ports would be cool at each seat, or USB ports at minimum, but a lot of airlines are just not there yet. That said, This Turkish Airlines flight was as good as it can get for a flight this short.