Review of Turkish Airlines flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town in Economy

THY

TK - Turkish Airlines

Flight taken on 16 December 2014
TK040
11:45 02h 20m 14:05
Class Economy
Seat 17A
Yonatan Paz
4,059 · 122 · 4 · 0

Hi and hello back, I hope that you'd a great easter/passover and welcome to my flight report!
This report consists my trip to South Africa for travelling and visit friends. My schedule is as follow:
TK TLV-IST Y A332 - http://flight-report.com/en/report-9054.html
TK IST-CPT (via Johannesburg) Y A333 - http://flight-report.com/en/report-9066.html
TK JNB-CPT Y A333 (Same plane, same flight from Istanbul) - YOU ARE HERE!
SA CPT-JNB Y A346
TK JNB-IST Y A333
TK IST-TLV Y A320
Background:
Me and my family planned to fly to South Africa to meet friedns and celebrate a b.day for one of them. We decided to went nearly christmas, because there is a vacation from school. We used our United Miles and payed 37.5K for each direction. We hadn't so many choices to fly from Tel Aviv to Cape Town on Star Alliance, our choices were Ethiopian Airlines (TLV-ADD B738, ADD-JNB B77L, JNB-CPT SA A319) or Turkish Airlines (TLV-IST TK A332, IST-JNB-CPT TK A333). We decided to book TK flights, as we can stay at the CIP lounge, TK service is better than ET and TK flight is a red-eye flight as not as ET flight.
Turkish will start non-stop Cape Town service from November, I think that flights will be operate on A330-200. It will cut the flight length from 13h10m to 11h.
After Landing in Johannesburg, Before departure to Cape Town:
We landed in Johannesburg 30 minutes after the scheduled time. Cape Town passengers needed to stay in the plane when Johannesburg passengers left the plane. The plane was cleanded and the crew replaced by the crew of yesterday IST-JNB-CPT-JNB flight.
We weren't allowed to leave the plane like on AF flight from Singapore to Jakarta, so we needed to burn more one hour without Air Condition.
More one point to mark, the cabin crew didn't do a counting of the passengers, In fact, A JNB passenger could continue to CPT without paying of JNB-CPT sector.
While we were waiting in the plane, I did some spotting:
British Airways (Comair Limited) Boeing 737-400. My friedns family are the owners of this airline, one of the value airlines in South Africa:


photo IMG_4432

Mango 737-800, Malawian Airlines Boeing 737-800 too and the airline that I've never see befroe - The pretty Air Seychelles Airbus A330-200!!!


photo IMG_4434

South African Airways Airbus A320:


photo IMG_4438-001

A close view of the Air Seychelles A332:


photo IMG_4436

Air Seychelles and South African tails. Don't forger the flysafair tail that locates far:


photo IMG_4441

More suprise to me, new airline that I've never see before, Cathay Pacific Boeing 777-300ER from HKG and departed after us. I excepted to see a 747-400:


photo image (23)

Flight map:


photo IMG_4442

The Giants:


photo image (7)

The load on JNB-CPT sector was 70-75%.
Departure:
Boring safety demo again:


photo IMG_4408

I didn't took photos of the take off, It was a rainny day.
After Take off, a lot of clouds were appearing durning the climb to FL340:


photo IMG_4453photo IMG_4454

Seat pitch is pretty tight (I'm 1.76 meter = 5F10inches)
In-flight menu, includs IST-JNB flight, also available in Turkish:


Display all

Product ratings

Airline

Turkish Airlines 9.0

  • Cabin8.0 / 10
  • Cabin crew10.0 / 10
  • Entertainment/wifi10.0 / 10
  • Meal/catering8.0 / 10
Departure airport

Johannesburg - JNB8.9

  • Efficiency10.0 / 10
  • Access8.0 / 10
  • Services8.5 / 10
  • Cleanliness9.0 / 10
Arrival Airport

Cape Town - CPT9.0

  • Efficiency7.5 / 10
  • Access9.5 / 10
  • Services9.5 / 10
  • Cleanliness9.5 / 10

Conclusion

TK is a great airline with a cheap prices. TK is better than airlines that I've flown like UA,LX,LH,OS,AR,AC,TG,LY and more. Great meals, great IFE and cabin crew but seat pitch can be tight. My flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul arrived latley and the plane to Cape Town wait so Turkish has a lot of delays (This is not my first time that I fly with Turkish)!!!
But I'll continue to fly with Turkish Airlines.
Destantions that I flew with Turkish:
Johannesburg (2 times)
Cape Town (2 times)
Shanghai
Singapore
Istanbul
Kathmandu
New Delhi

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Comments (4)

  • Finally, made it back through old reports, thank you for sharing this TK fifth-freedom route!

    I think CX only sends the B744s on regional Asian routes nowadays, they are almost completely phased out with their expanding fleet of B773s and the soon to arrive A350s.

    The catering on this flight is definitely not up to TK standards, just a sandwich? No menu either? Maybe they figure they can get away with this poor service since it's a fifth freedom far from their hub.

    Nice spotting at CPT.

    the cabin crew didn't do a counting of the passengers

    - They might have counted passengers exiting the plane and subtracted to get the head count, not that this makes the situation any more comfortable from a security standpoint since an accurate head count physically on the plane should be made.

  • TK definitely offers a solid product overall. I had no idea they flew CPT-JNB. I would say that's great for competition, but then again both TK and SA are star alliance, so they're probably not really competing with each other on pricing. Thanks for sharing!

    • Hi, It wasn't a real 5th freedom flight because I flew with them from Istanbul and not from Jo'burg. SAA is also great (I made CPT-JNB by A346).

  • Thanks for the great FR!

    I actually have reported FlySafair. It's a great airline! Sorry to ruin the novelty of your rare spotting :) !

    I would expect better catering from TK (Even SA used to give compliamentry meal on CPT-JNB, good ol' days

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