IST

[PigBoy#1 28]

Would a 90 minute transit be doable in Istanbul? I see decent pricing on TK for the time I am planning my holiday.

 

TIA

[lounge_lizard 108]

I've transitted Istanbul several times over the years, but it's over three years since the last time, and I was flying fron Britain, not USA.  So I don't know what things are like now.

Based on my memories, it should be tight but with luck, it should be just about do-able.

I would allow forty minutes to get off the aircraft and through security into the transit area. (May take an hour if the park the aircraft away from the terminal amd bus you to arrivals.

Then you have to find out which gate your onward flight leaves from (plenty of display screens in the transit area, switching in and out of English).

You come out of security into the duty free area at one end of the terminal building and have to find your way to the departure gates at the other end of the terminal.  I would allow thirty to forty minutes for that, and you WON'T have time for a toilet break.

This assumes that your inbound flight arrives on time, and that doesn't always happen.

My experience of delayed landing varied.  

On one occasion, when they had a large number of passengers for Bangkok, they held the onward flight and sneaked us past the transit security area.

However, when there only two or three of us, we had to do the full procedure, missed the onward flight, had to find our way to Customer Services, and were re-ticketed for the next BKK flight.   This meant losing my reservation on the Bell bus to Pattaya.  We then had to amuse ourselves  in Duty-Free for a few hours.  There are money changers in Duty-Free, so I was able to change a couple of small notes for Turkish Lira which meant I could get a bottle of water and a coffee.  It seems that my bank was very suspicious of the area, so a credit card didn't work.  There was wifi(patchy but just about usable), so I was able to tell my hotel that my arrival would be delayed.

That said, I found that the Turkish Airlines staff all spoke excellent English, and if approached politely, did their very best to be helpful.

 

[Regyai 414]

Are the flights on the same ticket /same ref #?

Golden rule is that they wont issue if outside the declared transit time minima for the airport.

(& and of course because they pick up costs if they fail)

[keyman 1,379]

I transited through Istanbul just last month, from the UK going to Izmir. However, I had a few hours to kill due to connections, so not sure if it would be a problem if only 90 minutes between flights. I didn't find the place very busy or have any delays going through security and signage was relatively good to get you across the airport.

[Rawhide2 1,337]

If its ticketed than its completely acceptable......

Some connections with other carriers are frequently ticketed at just 40 minutes transit let alone an hour and a half

[Rawhide2 1,337]

Ignore the dates/prices this is standard connection time on Austrian they use London thro to Bangkok

Friend also went out on Lufthansa to Bangkok few weeks ago with similar transit period 40 minutes

If its ticketed its all good. Most people will have seen (but probably taken little notice) of coming off the airbridge and at the end they'll have hello Girls/Boys with Boards saying Flight numbers go immediately to Gate 12 or whatever

Ground handling aint daft. If the first motor is behind schedule every passenger will be known to GH who have onward connections