Turkish airlines

[Calhx7]

Has anyone flown turkish airlines business class long haul? I need to book flights from Manchester to johannasburg and turkish airlines are coming up around £400 each less than air France or etihad. Is it worth the saving?

Only flown to istanbul with them, but business was very good.
The food is decent and modern planes. They have won airline of the year amd have a very good reputation. Etihad business is also excellent.
I wouldnt hesitate.

I wouldn't fly Turkish if you paid for the flight

Etihad are fab, along with most middle eastern airlines

Really Mozzchops, did you try them recently??
I fly regularly with etihad, emirates, cathay etc.
Turkish are all new planes and their lounges are fab.

I refuse to fly with anyone who may have a less than satisfactory maintenance programme and Turkish fall into that!

Are all their planes new or just re-fitted? I doubt they're all new.

I like BA & Emirates best, and have flown business and economy on both

Can you fly to dublin first? Flights to Jo are much cheaper from there. You can save 100s and fly with a decent airline tho it does make your flight longer.

Turkish have just been named airline of the year, and have a brand new fleet and fantastic food and service levels, which is why i asked if you had flown recently with them ie in the last two years? Obviously not as i think your information and opinion would change.
Ba club, aside from AA is now one of the worst business class service out there.
Etihad and emirates service is very good, but turkish is absolutely comparable when you have used them all recently.

No interest in their food or how good it is, I wouldn't fly them for maintenance alone

Still struggling to see why if their maintence of new planes was an issue, why they would be awarded airline of the year??

They're not new planes though,

www.airfleets.net/ageflotte/THY%20Turkish%20Airlines.htm

In fact they have just opened their new £550 million pound maintenace facility, and it is one of the worlds most modern and technologically sound in the world, ooops in fact they are even servicing planes for BA and Emirates when they are in the vicinity!
Better avoid travelling with Emirates and BA now Mozzchops.

Well they average the same age as emirates and are twice as new as BA.
So compared to most fleets they are.
They have just placed a large order with us this year and had fourty new planes from us last year.

Turkish is loads better than etihad.....in my humble (and recent) experience of both airlines.

Thelwell, i really rate it too, but it appears someone who has never tried it knows far more than we do!

DD flies with Turkish Airways all the time and says the service is brilliant. At the moment she's flying with them every couple of weeks.

I'd only be concerned from a security point of view. There was a recent (unconfirmed) bomb attack on a flight out of Mogadishu which was supposed to be operated by Turkish, but was flown by a different airline. Some confusion as to why.

I'm not really a tin hatter but I'd be worried in case someone has it in for them.

Not seeking to imply Turkish don't have great security. Probably the opposite if anything. You should be fine; it's very unlikely that anything would happen.

Istanbul airport is the only airport that i have had to go through security before i even entered the building.
It is the safest i have felt for a long time, as nobody was allowed into the airport without being throughly checked and scanned.
I think all airports should follow the same proceedure.

Yes fair point

MGQ not exactly top of the list on checks

As with most things it depends where you're flying from and to, I suppose

In Istanbul you go through security check to get into flipping Marks & Spencer at the moment

Yup, i am certainly in no rush to go back at the mo, thou i do love istanbul!

I think Turkish airlines is fab, I fly once every couple of months with them, great service, great food (well, for an airline) and usually nice planes. I've done both short and long haul with them and have never had a bad flight. Except perhaps when it had snowed in Istanbul and they'd only cleared the runways. The parking bays hadn't been cleared and the plane did skid a little when attaching itself to the gate .

I agree about the security in Istanbul, I do sometimes get a little wobbly before I go, but once I'm there I feel perfectly safe, possibly more so than I did in Paris a while ago.

Turkish airlines are fantastic. I've been flying with them for over a decade, all over the place. They're a billion times better than BA.

They are aggressively trying to take over Emirates airline share though, which would explain the bargain price.

I had pleasant experience with