Turkish Airlines A330-200: Business Class Review

On June 4, 2024, AviationSource was invited to an event held by Turkish Airlines in Istanbul to see their environmental ambitions.

Contents

Turkish Airlines TK1994 Business Class Review The Seat Turkish’ IFE – Planet On-Board Service Turkish Airlines’ Meal Service Turkish Airlines Drink Choices Arriving into Istanbul

This article is detailing Turkish Airlines’ Business Class product onboard its Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

Turkish Airlines TK1994 Business Class Review

Firstly, to begin this piece, we start at Manchester Airport (MAN) in the United Kingdom onboard Turkish Airlines flight TK1994 to Istanbul (IST). The flight time today was 3 hours 33 minutes.

The flight took place onboard one of the Turkish flag carrier’s Airbus A330-200 aircraft. Registered as TC-JIS, and at the time of writing is 15 years old.

TC-JIS has had a fruitful history, starting life out with TAM Linhas Aereas being delivered in 2008. Before heading to Turkish Airlines in 2014.

The Seat

Boarding at Manchester Airport from Terminal 1, Gate 29 was smooth. Once aboard the aircraft our seat for this flight, 3K was waiting.

This particular A330-200 for Turkish Airlines has a fairly old-style Business Class seat, with a total of 24 seats in a 2-2-2 configuration.

This particular seat is a full lie-flat with a decent amount of adjustment controls. You can adjust the headrest manually, but everything else on the seat is operated using the controls.

You have a button that if you press and hold will put the seat into a full lie-flat position. Or you can be sat straight up as you would be for takeoff and landing, as well as a position that slightly kicks out the footrest.

The controls also let you adjust the arm rest on the side of where the tray table comes out. It can be lowered quite a fair amount to help increase space whilst you are in the lie-flat position.

During night flights, or if you needed more light for reading, there is a dimmable light in-between the two seats.

One thing to note on this seat on Turkish Airlines’ A330-200, there was no air condition blower. Which meant it can certainly become quite warm during stages of the flight. However, the window blinds do help shade out some of the heat from the sun.

Turkish’ IFE – Planet

There is also a handheld remote that allow you to control Turkish’s inflight entertainment system (IFE), named Planet. You can do the following with the remote:

Change the channel.
Increase or decrease the sound volume.
Navigate the entire systems menus.
Call for the cabin crew.
Turn on or off the overhead light.
Play the previous or next songs/TV channel or skip the time of your movie.
Pause/Stop music, TV, or movie.
On the back of the remote is controls that also allow you to play some of the games on the IFE.

There was certainly a good amount of choice on the IFE, ranging from older to recently released movies, plenty of music genres, TV channels and games.

There is also a moving map on the IFE that shows your flights current location, altitude, speed, and distance/time until your arrival.

On-Board Service

Once on-board the aircraft and seated, the cabin crew offered a choice of welcome drinks. This consisted of water, orange juice or a lemon and lime with mint drink. I opted for the lemon and lime in this instance. The taste was great with the mint being a subtle hint.

We pushed back from Gate 29 at around 11:00 a.m. local time and headed for departure from Manchester Airport (MAN) from runway 23L with the takeoff time at 11:15 a.m. local time. Upon departure we turned South heading down the UK before across into Continental Europe.

After departure, the Turkish Airlines crew then come round with a hot towel to freshen up and help you to begin to relax for the flight ahead.

The crew also provided headphones to use with the IFE which had a good sound quality and were quite comfortable with a good amount of padding.

Turkish Airlines’ Meal Service

Shortly after reaching our cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, the crew began to serve Turkish Airlines’ breakfast menu.

The menu for this flight consisted of the following –

Fresh fruit salad.
Selection of cheese and smoked beef.
Marinated olives.
Homemade strawberry jam from Bodrum with countryside butter from Trabzon.
OR
Smoked turkey and cheese omelette with panfried tomatoes in olive oil.
Selection of “Gozleme” – A traditional grilled flat phyllo pastry filled with spinach and white cheese.
OR
Homemade porridge with dried fruit.
Chia bowl with fresh pineapples.
Selection of breads.

For this flight I had the fruit salad, cheese and smoked beef, olives, jam, and the chia bowl. The food was well presented and tasted quite fresh, certainly a light meal for a breakfast service.

Following this I was then served the homemade porridge with dried fruit, which was a nice, sweet dish to finish the meal service with.

Turkish Airlines Drink Choices

Alongside this, for my drink of choice I chose a 2022 Sauvignon Blanc. However, there were also the following choices from Turkish Airlines:

Fresh orange juice.
Homemade lemonade with mint, sour cherry, apple, and tomato.
Coca Cola.
Sugar free Coca Cola.
Mineral water.
Tonic water.
Homemade ayran.
Black tea from Rize.
Green tea.
Indian coffee.
Turkish coffee.
Hot chocolate.
Different types of wellness teas: Relaxing / Energizer / Digestive
Champagne.
Blended Whisky.
Bourbon Whisky.
Gin.
Vodka.
Raki.
White Wine (Kavaklidere Egeo Sauvignon Blanc or Torres Vina Sol Parellada).
Red Wine (Kavaklidere Egeo Blend Merlot-Syrah-Cabernet Sauvignon).
Beer (Efes or Heineken).

Following the meal service, the crew then come back around again with another hot towel to help freshen up.

A little bit later into the flight we were then given a snack, which was Turkish Roasted Hazelnuts. These were a good snack to tie over for the arrival into Istanbul.

Arriving into Istanbul

We arrived into Istanbul (IST) at approximately 4:50 p.m. local time on runway 34L before taxiing to gate F14.

The taxi in Istanbul was quite some time given how large the airport is, with it being the current world’s largest airport under one roof.

After arriving at F14, the walk to get to passport control took about 15 minutes, however, was helped with moving travellators to help speed up the walk. Getting through passport control was quick with hardly any queue.

I was quite pleased with how Istanbul’s arrivals are controlled; however, it is worth noting that Wi-Fi is a challenge. To get onto the airports Wi-Fi you need to go to one of the Wi-Fi kiosks that are dotted around and scan your passport.

You are only given one hour free on the airport Wi-Fi, if you need longer then you have to pay for it.

All in all, I was certainly impressed with the service on-board, however, the old business class cabin is certainly outdated Turkish Airlines’ A330-200 fleet. It will be interesting to compare this to my return flight in Business Class on Turkish Airlines’ brand-new A321neo.