[Cheops9255]

My two recent flights on turkish airlines were hellish. In the first instance, the flight was delayed four hours. But the second flight was a total nightmare. I landed in Istanbul to catch a connecting flight to Dhaka but when I landed, there was a note stating the flight was delayed for 7 hours and thirty minutes. No Turkish air reps were available, nor was any assistance provided. In total, I waited about ten hours with hundreds of other people with no information from the airline when the plane would finally arrive, even after the 7 hours and thirty minutes passed. we watched with dismay while other planes were boarded with no information from the airline.

People were exhausted from waiting - the plane was supposed to leave at 4 PM, but by 1:30 AM, boarding had still not started, and no further information was available. when boarding did start there was one attendant present for hundreds of people and he was obnoxious and offensive. the boarding process was extremely slow and chaotic - by bus to an outlying plane - and buses came extremely slowly, when people complained, the attendant refused them access to the plane and told them there were not permitted to fly ( even though they had tickets) because they had the audacity to speak up. when two older women justifiably complained, the attendant called the police and six police arrived and proceeded to arrest the women, while intimidating everyone else. the turkish flight representative took the presence of the police as an opportunity to further intimidate and insult people, and even tried to arrest a man who tried to take pictures of the melee. It was a disgusting, pathetic display of arrogance and incompetence. it was clear that the passengers were regarded as cattle, and no interest was given to customer service or concern for elderly and child passengers were waited for more than ten hours with no compensation whatsoever.

one humorous note: on the plane, as the attendants served the garbage airline meals in cheap plastic covered by foil, the meals were served by a man dressed in full chef's regalia, as though to suggest that the meal was a gourmet treat. the meal was consisted of a warmed up omelet. This was a pathetic display of a third world airline, which advertises itself as one of the world's best, that is lost in its own mythology while it operates like the pathetic, third world airline it is. I strongly urge you to avoid Turkish airlines at all costs. I am filing complaints with the government of Turkey, star alliance, the EU and the Department of Transportation which recently fined Turkish airlines hundreds of thousands of dollars for failing to respond to complaints from passengers.