Flight Log of Pegasus Airlines Flight 4122 from Istanbul Gökçen to Izmir on August 18th, 2016
This post follows the previous one about flight QR241 from Doha to Istanbul Gokcen.
About my connection.
I was somehow limited by our fares that our outbound flight could only be to this remote airport on the Asian side of Istanbul, with virtually little public transport. So, I deemed the only way to make this work was to immediately fly to our next stop. Similar to most tourists to Turkey, our next stop could be either Goreme or Izmir, depending on whether we took the cycle of cities (Goreme, Antalya, Fethiye, etc) clockwise or anti-clockwise. Since my father had been and was hypercritical about connection times, he picked Izmir with 140-minute transit over Goreme with 120-minute transit. So our next flight was Pegasus Airlines 4122 to Izmir.
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Oh, one thing I had to mention, my father had been more than hypercritical at the sound of “overnight bus”, and another benefit of staring our tour at Izmir in an anti-clockwise manner was that, AnadoluJet, a subsidiary of Turkey Airlines, once operated daily flight between Antalya and Goreme, and their schedule favored flying from Antalya to Goreme, which could save him one night of sleep, as he described it. Well, the sad thing is that, after we have booked everything, AnadoluJet cancelled our flight from Antalya to Goreme, which was like hell to my father’s ears.
Oh, one more thing I had to mention, my father’s so hypercritical about our 140-minute transit time, that he insisted we purchased “Pegasus FLEX”, which made our ticket changeable at 9TL per person.Now back to our connection. Since we were seated to the front of the plane, and we rushed all the way from the jet bridge to the immigration, we waited for very little at the immigration lines. (I think by and large there aren’t many international flights at Gokcen airport, so waiting times on the whole are small.)
As for immigration, it was basically typing visa numbers into the computer, scanning and stamping the passport, and welcome to Turkey, no questions asked no wonder ISIS operatives are flocking into this nation.
Then we did waited for some time for our bags. Again, since A321’s a modestly sized plane, there won’t too many bags to wait for.
Pretty well-cleaned.
Then the guys at the customs were as absent-minded as their Chinese counterparts. After that we withdrew some cash from the ATMs, got upstairs and rechecked our bags at Pegasus’s counters.
I shall say that except for the lack of public transport, I’m quite fond of Gokcen Airport, about its architecture style and design.
Then we cleared the securities and proceed to our gate which is at the farthest corner of the passenger terminal, and we had more than an hour to spare before our scheduled takeoff.
So conclusion, two-hour international-to-domestic transfer on separate tickets is totally fine at Gokcen, given the previous flight doesn’t delay.
Oh, one thing I had to say is that, it seemed Turkish airports just don’t bother to install water machines, as I never found any of them in the three airports I have visited during the trip.
It seemed to be some chartered flight, as there were no public record of this plane flying to Istanbul, and this plane’s remotely parked in Gokcen Airport.
Just arrived from Ankara.
It seemed they could save the cost of having safety cards by printing it directly at the back of the seats.
Just arrived from Ankara.
The Pegasus plane’s off to Kastamonu, while the Turkish plane’s off to Izmir.
Since Gokcen Airport only had one runway, we waited at the end of taxiway for two more landings.
Another Pegasus Plane.
AnadoluJet B738.
The actual flying time of this flight was 47 minutes (1646-1733), and during such brief time (minus takeoff and landing) the beautiful ladies of Pegasus Airlines still managed to perform cabin services, a.k.a. food and drink sale. I’ve already posted the menu (I had to say, the things were priced similarly as airport McDonald’s.) before.
What interested me was that, I saw passengers paying with their credit cards on the flight, which meant either the crew had got POS-machines with unrealistically strong antenna that could connect to satellites even through the electromagnetic shield of airplane fuselage; or their POS was connected to in-flight WiFi (or something similar), which was relayed onto satellites, in which case why didn’t they offer in-flight WiFi?
The island whose name “lesbian” is derived from.
It served as Izmir's airport until the opening of the Adnan Menderes Airport, situated south of the metropolitan area.
Oh, I shall say it’s so great that the check-in system of Pegasus gave me a window seat on the right-hand side, so I’d got to enjoy both Turkey’s magnificent shorelines during the flight, and the shadow of our plane on golden fields just before landing.
We were parked next to it.
Since we sat towards the back of the plane, we were in no rush of getting off the plane, as watched the baggage handlers loading and unloading checked bags.
One need to look no further than the seats to find that this is a pretty aged plane.
Very much modernly designed.
Very much modernly designed.
Very much modernly designed.
Very much modernly designed.
By the way, if Izmir Airport looked a lot better, it had got railway connections, the lines were presumably as short (since it hadn’t got much traffic), maybe I should be more fond of this airport than Istanbul Gokcen.
Having claimed our checked bags, we headed outside for the train station, and took the train to Selcuk. This will be on the next post.
END