Our journey today starts out of IST - Istanbul Airport.
And it's my first ever time departing IST. I've just never had the chance or need to pass through this airport before.
The flight arrived in from TFU - Chengdu into IST - Istanbul before being briefly turned-around, offloading a few passengers and continuing on to ATH - Athens.
You can book solely on to the fifth-freedom leg from Istanbul to Athens, and vice-versa. My ticket cost me £50.00 one-way.
You can't check-in for the flight or use any of Sichuan's digital services or app though without the need for a Chinese mobile number.
So I checked-in at the kiosks inside the airport. There is no charge for this.
Then once through security, it was time to find the Priority Pass nominated lounge, today being the IGA Lounge.
This place is well designed with lovely decor and a long, sweeping entrance.
It's also insanely big with lots of different areas.
There's two bar areas with a variety of complimentary alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks on offer.
On the food front, I had a small salad with some Turkish pastry and olives.
And a glass of Turkish sweet tea. What a way to start the morning!
Suddenly, the flight showed boarding and gate F19 is roughly a 20+ minute walk from the IGA Lounge so I got my sprinting shoes on, only to arrive and find that the plane hadn't even arrived into Istanbul yet and as such, we'd be delayed.
Eventually though, we were able to board Sichuan's A330-200 over to Athens.
Their A330-200 is in a 2/4/2 configuration.
And here's my seat in Economy, 50A.
Sadly, the immediate area around the seat was very dirty and dusty!
The fabric was also peeling away on the seats. This aircraft was certainly showing it's age!
As was the IFE and remote, which was… ancient!
I was also very intrigued with this sign. What is the monitoring area? I couldn't see any CCTV cameras in the cabin and these are usually only reserved to monitor flight deck access and not cabin conditions. Any ideas?
It was just getting light as we started to pushback.
And the safety video was rather amusing, especially demonstrating how turbulence works!
The flight snack was handed out during the taxi to the runway. A packet of 'red dates tablets'.
They were crunchy and very sweet. I wouldn't choose them personally but they weren't that bad.
And that's it, we were away!
The IFE was very limited. It lagged considerably and there weren't many entertainment options loaded on to the system.
There was however, free-flowing jasmine tea available to all guests.
I managed to snag a small snooze too as we cruised towards Athens.
The seat was very stiff and rigid however, providing no lower back/lumbar support.
The toilet was relatively clean.
Featuring these decorative 'fake' flowers!
Has anyone here seen Sichuan's panda design A350? They were heavily promoting it in the on-board literature.
And in just under an hour, we were touching down into Athens.
Thanks for reading and watching, as always! See you next week.
