My parents will be visiting me here in the United States this summer. I am really excited to see them after such a long time. As soon as their visas came through, I started to look for tickets. I found that Turkish Airlines has reasonably priced tickets with reasonable transit times. I was all set to book the tickets through Turkish when a friend suggested that I look at the reviews.
Scavenging through the internet, I found major dissatisfaction among Nepalese travelers. The major complaints were:
1. The flight is almost always late; most of the time more than 5 hours which in turn results in missed connection in Istanbul.
2. The next flight is often the next day meaning the passengers have to spend 18 hours in Istanbul. This would not be so bad if they could rest in a hotel. However, the hotel is outside the airport and the airport staff won't grant visas to travelers with Nepalese passport.
3. Despite the fact that Nepal is a Hindu country where people are vegetarian for religious reasons and consider cow to be sacred animal, Turkish seems to have more beef meals. Some passengers complained that they were hungry in the flight because they didn't eat meat.
4. The customer service staff are terrible; do not speak English; have an attitude; act like they are giving money of their own pocket when asked for the airline provided food vouchers. One of the lady was so busy looking at her iPhone that she didn't even look up to the passenger and just pointed as to where they are supposed to go. The back and forth between staff sending passengers from one desk to another was just terrible.
My father is a retired government officer and my mother is a school teacher. I would hate for them to go through this ordeal. They are old, religious and vegetarian. God forbid someone offers them to either eat beef or remain hungry for the entire duration of their flight!
My questions to you are:
1. Have you done anything to address the above mentioned complaints. If the plane is almost always late, have you thought about just changing the schedule to the late one so that its on time?
2. Have you made any effort to talk to the Turkish authorities regarding short temporary visas for Nepalese passengers to use the hotel or maybe build a hotel inside the airport like every other airport in the world?
3. Does Turkish know that Hindus do not eat beef and that many Hindus do not eat any meat altogether? I think not. Because otherwise it would be very hard to explain the lack of vegetarian options and the abundance of beef options in a flight departing from a country with 80% Hindus.
4. How do you feel about the customer service staff at Istanbul Airport? Apparently, there was a scuffle between a passenger and a staff at one of the counters over there. Are the staff too good to be talking to passengers? Where did they go to for training? I say this because here in the States, with that attitude, you get fired.
5. This is the most important of question. Does Turkish want to make money? If yes, Turkish needs to seriously rethink their strategy in this particular route. Its the 21st century. The internet can have a great impact. I myself write for my college newspaper from time to time. With 30,000 students, many of whom go abroad for studies, Turkish Airlines needs to think what might go in that article. Nepal's economy is heavily dependent on expats. And we expats talk. We have our forums. I would hate to see Turkish lose its business due to bad management because it is such a great route for us.
