Kalkan Turkey Forum - EnjoyKalkan.com
Travel and Accommodation => Flights and Travel => Topic started by: Cuddles on January 23, 2015, 12:02:19 PM
-
I have just written to Pegasus to complain about the stressful situation that they put passengers into at Istanbul.
We flew with them from Stanstead in December, returning last week and both journeys were pretty fraught. To start with the plane was a little late leaving for the first leg to Istanbul and it didn't make up any of the time. When we arrived at Istanbul some 25 minutes late, there was the mother of all queues to get through passport control. None of the airport officials were interested that so many people would miss their connections, neither was the person on the Pegasus desk. If we had not dodged under the barrier and gone to one of the empty desks for Turkish nationals, we would not have made the flight down to Dalaman. Several people who arrived at the gate just after us were denied boarding.
Going home was little different, we got to the gate for the flight to Stanstead only a few minutes before it closed.
Has anyone else been in this situation or, even missed the connecting flight? What was Pegasus's reaction?
-
Think I was on that flight ;)
-
Yes, the first time we went from Dalaman to Stansted it was horrendous, exactly as you describe, queues and no one interested, people telling us we should have got to Istanbul airport earlier and couldn't jump the queue. In the end we found that a lot of connecting passengers were delayed and the Pegasus flight to Stansted was held - not that we knew that when we were rushing to get to the gate. Since then we have been OK but there is no guarantee that will continue. I have assumed since then, however that the Stansted flight would be held, maybe wishful thinking. Never flown in the opposite direction with Pegasus. We seem to be stuck with Pegasus for November flights to London, I see T Cook have started a winter flight and thought that would answer the problem but they are charging £221 for a one way ticket!
-
OK Samson, I admit that if it hadn't been for your limbo dancing skills, we wouldn't have made the connection.
-
We've flown with Pegasus from Stansted a couple of times, once the incoming plane was delayed by nearly an hour. A lot of people were worrying about getting their connections at SAW but the despatcher told us that as Pegasus was the main user there, they would hold all the flights. It seemed to be the case and there wasn't a problem. Similarly we had the same thing in Sept with our Turkish Airline flight from Gatwick, almost an hour delay because of bad weather in Istanbul, thought we were going to miss our connection to Dalaman but the planes were held.
-
Maybe with the new Visa rules there will be a lot less people using these flights so things should be easier ;D
-
We got delayed leaving uk, missed the connecting flight . We was transferred to a hotel for the night. The most annoying thing was our luggage made the flight !!
-
Thomas Cook have changed their prices for out of season flights, the flight to Stansted in November is now only £63 not the £221 it was last week - so no more Pegasus.
-
Which is worse, the stress induced by Pegasus or, the lack of space on Thomas Cook? With the changes to the visa rules and the weather this past Xmas & New Year, the answer for me is neither.
-
It's not always possible for a flight to 'make up time'.
More often than not, the flight, once planned, and having obtained the slot, is given a height, speed and direction by Air Traffic Control.
Generally, the aircraft would be restricted - especially true if it's a short (ish) flight without the scope to change altitude or speed without bumping into something else up there!
On longer flights, like the leg from Istanbul to Stansted, there's much more scope for the aircraft to respond to opportunities to increase or decrease altitude or speed. Put simply, you have to weigh this up with the fact that jet airliners operate most efficiently between 35000 and 38000 feet - going lower means slower (denser air - more drag) and thus more fuel used, higher (over about 40000) and there is little gain as the speed of sound remains pretty constant, and the maximum speed of the aircraft remains the same. (it's a lot more complicated than this - but, as you may realise, this isn't the Open University!)
Once at the airport, chaos is generally down to the airport operator and contractors, whom the airlines pay to look after the passengers. Intransigence and bad Customer Relations, are another thing, however, and airports are very, very good at ignoring the latter and improving the former!