Flight Review: Turkish Airlines Airbus A330-300 Economy Class

 

Flight#: TK1854

From: Barcelona (BCN)

To: Istanbul (IST)

Flight time: 3h 30min

Aircraft: Airbus A330-300

This flight report can be considered a sort of add-on to a previous flight review I published of Turkish Airlines A330-300, it is even on the same route (BCN-IST), just that in that previous occasion, my flight was on business class and, in this case, I traveled in the main cabin, on economy.

I will skip, thus, some elements, which are common across classes of service, nevertheless, I hope that the two flight reviews combined give you the full picture!

The Cabin

In these pictures you can get the look and feel of the Turkish Airlines A330-300 economy class cabin. As you can see, it is a 2-4-2 cabin layout, so make sure you do the check-in early because you really, really want to get one of the window seats (always my preferred option!) or, as a second best, one of the aisle seats closer to the window!

Cloth upholstery can be tricky if not well maintained (easy to wear out quickly), but whomever takes care of this at Turkish Airlines is doing a good job of keeping it fresh (this particular aircraft, TC-JOG, was around 9 years old at the time of the flight).

The choice and combination of colours is, I’d say, unusual, but those red elements align well with the Turkish Airlines’ brand.

So, fortunately, I managed to get the window seat and here is the view for the next three and half hours.

Each economy class passenger gets a pillow and a set of headphones. No blanket, but I guess this is because of the relatively short duration of the flight (Turkish Airlines deploys wide-body aircraft on some popular European routes) and the fact that it is day light flight (on other longer economy class I have flown recently on Turkish we were given also an amenity kit, blankets and water).

You can see some features of the economy class seat:

  • Seatback IFE screen (more on the next section!)

  • Decent seat pitch (see picture in next section)

  • Suit hanger on the left side

  • Literature pocket at the bottom in front

  • Foot rest! (interesting!)

  • Enveloping (sort of) seat “ears”

  • And seat recline (not the buttons on the left)

Absent: in-seat power

Food and amenities

Turkish Airlines IFE system, to the best of my knowledge, is the same across the whole fleet. It is pretty comprehensive when it comes to quantity and diversity of content and genres.

As a personal note and digging into the content that is unique to the airline, if on TAP Air Portugal I spent quite some time trying to sharpen my Portuguese language skills, on Turkish Airlines it was the series of short documentaries (around 3’ each) about Turkey’s historical and natural wonders that caught my attention.

By the way, there is also a Turkish language course available on Turkish aIrlines IFE platform, although I felt the challenge of starting from scratch a bit too daunting for such a short flight!)

There was also inflight wifi, although if you are on economy class, you must pay for one of the data plans (or sign up for the Miles&Smiles program in case you are not yet a member).

In this particular case, I used the 3.5h flight as a period to disconnect, actually, but you can get an idea in this snapshot of the data plans available and the cost of each of them.

Food and drink

And, as is the norm on Turkish Airlines, the food was quite good.

Even on a relatively short economy class flight you can expect to be served a substantious hot meal with the accompanying drinks, bread and coffee.

Our Take

Turkish Airlines is one of the few airlines that still do proper “full service” on economy class.

I guess it makes sense to preserve product consistency when most passengers are on long-haul journeys, connecting in Istanbul.

So, yeah, I would consider the chance of flying the Turkish Airlines A330 on a European route like this one, as a bonus!

 
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