I’ve had quite enough drama for one trip, but there’s one more twist that just makes me chuckle…a broken seat on my Turkish Airlines flight.
The Latest Twist: Broken Seat On Turkish Airlines Threatens My Trip
After my ticket was reissued, I attempted to check in at the counter.
Check-In Agent: Sir, are you an employee? Are you traveling on a pass?
Me: No.
Check-In Agent: That’s odd because you’re on standby.
Me: My ticket was just reissued. Maybe it has not been updated in your system yet?
Check-In Agent: There are no seats left in business class.
Me: Am I not holding one?
Check-In Agent: Hold on, let me get my supervisor.
A manager walks over dressed in a Turkish Airlines uniform (it appeared she was an actual Turkish employee instead of a contracted staff member).
She greeted me and remarked that she had been following the back and forth on my ticket and was pleased that the LA ticketing office could resolve my issue. I agreed.
Then she broke the news.
“Sir, the cabin is booked 26/28 and there the two seats left were reported broken on the inbound from Istanbul.”
My heart sank. What now…a downgrade? She consulted with a colleague for a moment out of earshot and then came back to me.
“Here’s what we will do. The recline may not work on your seat if our engineers cannot fix it here in LA. But we’ll put you in the seat and the flight attendants may manually have to recline the seat for you into the lie-flat position.”
Whew! That’s something I could deal with.
“We are blocking both remaining seats so if engineers can only fix one, you’ll get the one that works.”
I thanked her and she smiled at me and again said that she was pleased my ticket issue had been resolved and I could get on the evening flight.
Wouldn’t it have been ironic if I had finally been rebooked only to be booted out from business class because the seat was broken? It’s not like it has never happened before (it happened on United on a Newark – LA flight and I was not allowed to occupy the broken seat).
Now, can I finally get on my way?
@Matthew … How did you spend your time whilst waiting and dealing with the problems : did you have a sandwich or a drink ? Once at LAX-Bradley I had a pizza with only tomato sauce and two glasses of beer , and that was 11 am .
Was flying EWR/SFO and my 757 Polaris seat got stuck in lie flat during the meal service and I had to eat mine in the galley. They fixed my seat pretty quickly after. Got a $600 certificate for my “troubles”
Sounds like a win! Finally!
My God. I admire your perseverance but think I would have given up on phone call 16.
Yes. I will be looking forward to the trip report with a breakfast Shakshuka!
How long was the flight delayed?
Only by about 20 min. Very normal for Turkish.
Is the feedback form the only way to fix anything? I was on a UA ticket that connected to TK flights. I couldn’t check in. UA agents saw no issue and couldn’t understand why they couldn’t check me in. They even tried going through the website. Trying to pull out up on the website have an error telling me to call customer service. I did and was rather rudely told that the flights were cancelled. This was not reflected on their website not UAs system. I called again and was again rudely told the flights were cancelled. In the end, I rerouted. Later checking, the flights were not cancelled. Did they lie to me because they didn’t know how to fix the issue?
I had a broken seat last year after paying $1000 for the upgrade at the ticket counter upon departure. I tried in vain to get a partial refund for the fee since my seat wouldn’t recline correctly (I did get the crew to manually recline it after departure and retract it before landing – I slept the entire flight).
I contacted several Turkish airlines offices and addresses to no avail. I gave up on them and lost a lot of respect for them. You have way more patience with them than I do.
@M … Why did you book with Turkish ?
I would have taken it all as a sign from God that I shouldn’t be on that plane! 🙂
Tell me Matthew, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
I do like hanging around gymnasiums… 😉
Tell me Matthew, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
Ehe ehe ehe.. I am retarded and ignorant
TK really is love/hate.
+I can be at my home airport (NUE) in 20 minutes and they’ll fly one stop to nearly every country on the planet. Afternoon tea in Somalia? Sure! EW cancelled my flight home from EBL? We got you covered! Going to Venezuela? Why not?
+decent meals in economy. I’m too cheap for business class to IST but still get solid service
+real business class seats
-customer service. nothing i’d ever want to deal with
-IST airport. I mean…it’s perfectly nice, the lounges are solid, but holy mother of god is it large. And you have to walk everywhere.
We had an issue with one of the seats (out of four) flying back from.istabul to newark. My daughter was seated in that seat. The flight attendants were unavle to fix. My husband and my daughter swtiched to allow both to rest. Unfortunately, they did not open a case in the flight. I reported it on the websute after we landed and they denied that there was a seat issue. To us it was ridiculous since either my husband or my daughter had to sit through the 11 hour long flight. It was a paid ticket (not an upgrade) which made it even worse.
While I don’t agree with your last sentence (currency paid for the flight doesn’t matter), that’s really shameful. I hope you escalate the matter further.