Since Turkish Airlines was only offering the extended city tour, I had to cut out of the city tour a bit early.  Despite my best efforts to arrive at the airport with minimal time to spare, I still had time to visit the Turkish Airlines business class/Star Alliance Gold lounge.

From the time I booked this award (in December) until departure, Aeroplan was firmly convinced that I was flying on an Airbus A320 series aircraft.  A few weeks before the trip, the then Continental.com website began reporting that Turkish Airlines was operating an Airbus A340 between Istanbul and Berlin, even while Aeroplan (and Turkish Airlines!) were showing an A321 loaded on the schedule.

I didn’t get my hopes up.  Once I arrived at the gate, I was informed that the inbound aircraft was late, so I found a seat for myself somewhat removed from the windows.  When the gate agents began the mad boarding scramble, I looked out the windows and noticed two engines hanging off the left wing:  Continental.com was right.

Turkish 1723
Istanbul (IST) to Berlin-Tegel (TXL)
Saturday, March 31st
Duration: 2 hours, 50 minutes
Aircraft: A340-311 (TC-JDJ)
Seat: 2B (Business Class)

Our flight included dinner.  Normally, I stash my menu in my bag and photograph it off the plane with (hopefully) better lighting.  This time, I left it under my screen and a flight attendant took it back as he was walking through the cabin.

I left the United lounge shortly before the revised, scheduled boarding time.  The flight status TVs throughout the lounge had out of order signs next to them (despite being on) that didn’t exactly inspire my confidence.  Our departure was a bit further delayed, giving me a moment to snap a few pictures of the plane and take a quick walk to the end of the pier before boarding commenced.

Poor business class award availability for this flight notwithstanding, the cabin was quite empty:  15 of the 28 seats were occupied.

Turkish 51
Tokyo (NRT) to Istanbul (IST)
Friday, March 30th
Depart: 12:28PM
Arrive: 6:51PM
Duration: 12 hours, 23 minutes
Aircraft: 777-3F2ER (TC-JJL)
Seat: 2B (Business Class)

Like Air New Zealand’s safety video featuring the All Blacks (when your flight’s IFE is working properly), Turkish Airlines has a slightly off-beat one of its own with Manchester United.

The obligatory, pre-departure flight show:

The menu read as follows:

Since I had requested a vegetarian meal, my appetizer came preplated rather than served off of the cart.

After the meal, the flight attendants closed the window shades and turned on the mood lighting for our long flight across Asia.

About two hours out from Istanbul, we had a second meal service.

Overall, I was impressed by the Turkish Airlines business class product’s superb soft product, but I felt the seat left a bit to be desired.

New planes with new interiors goes a long way at providing a compelling hard product.  When I took this trip in late March, the 777-300ER I was on was about 13 months old; in comparison, the Thai 747-400 I took to Tokyo was about 21 years old.  That said, as a hard product person, the question I had for myself was “who would put up with a middle seat in paid business class in this day and age?”  It’s a question I ask myself every time I see the legacy United’s “new” 8 abreast business class product on its 747’s and 777’s.  (I shudder to contemplate United’s old business class product for long-haul travel, even if I enjoy their p.s. service domestically.)  In comparison, Air New Zealand fits 26-28 lie-flat business class seats, each with direct aisle access, on its 777’s in the same space that Turkish Airlines uses to fit 28 angled lie-flat business class seats, consisting of 8 window seats and 4 middle seats without direct aisle access.

As I alluded to earlier, I booked a second business class Star Alliance award with Aeroplan in December during the business class for the price of coach “glitch.”  Coupled with the Aeroplan transfer promotion, the award cost 50k Membership Rewards points (all from my Amex Platinum signup bonus) in addition to taxes and fees.

When I booked my trip to Sydney and Auckland, I transfered 76k Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan.  At the time, Aeroplan was offering a 25k mile bonus if 100k miles were transfered from a single program.  I went ahead and transfered an additional 24k points to Aeroplan, waited a few days for the points to post, and then transfered an additional 26k points to Aeroplan.  Fortunately for me the booking glitch lasted while I waited for my bonus points to post, allowing me to book this Asia 1 business class award (normally 125k miles) for 75k Aeroplan miles which I obtained by transferring 50k Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan.

From credit card signups, promotions, and actual flying, I’ve wound up with globs of frequent flier miles and I want to make the most of them.  Since I was on a United revenue ticket for my trip to Europe in January, I did not make use of my US Airways Grand Slam-obtained Dividend Miles as I had originally planned to.  Since US Airways places Thailand and Singapore into its “South/Central Asia” award category (and thereby requiring 160k miles instead of 120k for first class), planning a trip there using Dividend Miles instead would not be as efficient.

Since this trip was booked roughly three months in advance, scarce award availability on other transatlantic flights and fuel surcharges from Aeroplan on Lufthansa-operated segments led me to pick my routing via Copenhagen and Berlin on United.  As I have never been to Denmark and last visited Berlin in 2005, both stops were reasonable concessions to make.

A further constraint of award travel are the routing rules imposed by the airlines.  IATA-set maximum permitted mileage (MPM) figures between city pairs can be used to validate revenue ticket routings.  The MPM for EWR-TYO is 12511 miles via the Atlantic and 8084 miles via the Pacific.  For comparison, the great circle distance is 6751 miles.

On a similar vein, MPM’s can be used to validate award tickets with some carriers.  United permits the MPM to be exceeded by 15%.  Aeroplan permits a (comparatively) meager 5% overage.  Since this is an Aeroplan award ticket, these rules gave me 13136 miles to work with in each direction for travel via the Atlantic (practically speaking, this means “via Europe” both ways due to distance restrictions and the Star Alliance route structure).  I made the most of it on my outbound leg (at 12979 miles) and comparatively less on my inbound leg (at 10666 miles).

As a continuation of this mental exercise, we could validate the itinerary as a EWR-BKK award.  The MPM for EWR-BKK is 11734 miles via the Atlantic and 10648 miles via the Pacific; the MPM+5% is 12320 and 11180 respectively.  While this works for the outbound journey, my now convoluted return from Bangkok (BKK-NRT-IST-TXL-EWR) exceeds the limit at 13555 miles.

Given these constraints, I arrived at my trip itinerary:  Newark to Copenhagen to Zurich to Bangkok to Tokyo to Istanbul to Berlin to Newark.  Aeroplan permits two stopovers (a stop over 24 hours) in addition to the destination itself; I’m stopping in Zurich, Bangkok, and Tokyo.  I have extended layovers in Copenhagen, Istanbul, and Berlin.