Turkish Airlines long haul experience .. in the back

This was my first experience flying Turkish Airlines on long-haul flights. I had initially wanted to get the cheap tickets from Frankfurt to Ulaanbaatar on Mongolian Airlines, but they didn't seem to be available on my dates, so I opted for going from Helsinki to Istanbul and then to Ulaanbaatar. The layover in Istanbul was only an hour and five minutes, which was unnerving. But I made it, so did my luggage, and overall had a happy experience with Turkish Airlines. Full, hot meals on intra-European flights, eyeshades for the tourist class passengers, etc. Nice!

The European flights seem to be running on new Airbus A321 NEOs, and the Ulaanbaatar route is every second day only, using a single A330. The A330 is comfortable, seating is not too bad even in the back. Maybe the colors bring some 1970s feeling though:

Helsinki to Istanbul:

Istanbul International airport (offical page, wikipedia):

Istanbul to Ulaanbaatar:

My AirTags were telling me that all my luggage had been loaded from the Helsinki flight to the Ulaanbaatar flight, despite the very tight connection. Well done:

Then we arrived at the Chinggis Khaan airport at Ulaanbaatar (official page, wikipedia). The first pictures are from the outside, next one a sign in the airport, and then the check-in area and the gate areas. And finally some other planes in the airport.

Return journey:

The route from Istanbul to Ulaanbaatar does not go over Russia, thank God. Still, it goes unnervingly close to for instance Baku that was the starting point of the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 that Russians shot down without any clue or care about the innocent passengers.

At the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, I also had a nice even if a bit cold sauna experience, see the other article here. And in Ulaanbaatar I explored caves and went skiing, see the articles here and here.

For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.