Flight Log of Qatar Airways Flight 241 from Doha to Istanbul Gökçen on August 18th, 2016

This post follows the previous one about flight QR871 from Shanghai to Doha.

The images in this post are hosted on Imgur. Email me should there be any display problems.

While waiting in line at transit screening at Doha airport, my father bumped into some (which means more than one) Chinese tour groups to Egypt. And he immediately started dreaming of our next trip to Egypt, obviously without considering how much more infiltrated by ISIS was Egypt than West Turkey.

It seemed that 4am was not sort of peak time for transiting at Doha airport, as we literally went through the screenings with little waiting.

And since our 6-hour transition was so long, I got the gate information of our next flight from Google Now, rather than the information screen at the airport.

Our gate was at the ground level for the shuttle buses (which is one floor below the main concourse with all the jet bridges), and there’re virtually no power outlets on the ground level, we picked our seats on the main concourse.

I had to say, Qatar Airways did have an earlier flight to the bigger Ataturk Airport of Istanbul. But it seemed that our super-cheap fare wasn’t available on that route, so we flew to the smaller, more remote Asian Gokcen Airport. It didn’t hurt, as most budget airlines of Turkey operate from Gokcen Airport, where we would start our final flight of the day to Izmir.

To kill the connection time, I decided to explore more about the airport while catching a few Pokemons, if I had the luck.

At one moment I bumped into one of their food courts. But after finding the only western chain they had was Burger King (#BringBackMyMcDonalds), which priced its stuff at US rates (maybe more), where there’re few seats left, I suddenly stopped feeling hungry any more.

Several episodes of Japanese animations later, it’s boarding time. Our lovely A321 (A7-AIA) was parked so distantly that we were literally given a tour of Doha Airport along the way. Although one could hardly call all the sands along the way “scenery”.
Well, on the bright side, you could marvel at man’s power of turning such a barren land into the transportation hub of the world, with oil.

Of the previous two photos, I took the first one inside the shuttle bus while the second one outside. I found the glares in the first photo looked pretty nice.

While, since it’s the small and insignificant A321, the onboard entertainment pad of course wasn’t as trendy as in the wide-body jets. Even the USB charging outlets didn’t work (both me and my mom’s). It wasn’t until after the flight that we discovered that, there were power outlets beneath our seats.

Thank God our takeoff was what by and large, on time. That meant our connection at Gokcen Airport should be fine.

Then, maybe due to the dusty atmosphere of the Middle East, I basically adjust the contrast and clarity of every photo that followed, some drastically.

Now long after takeoff, we were given a tour of downtown Doha, together with its shorelines habited by the superrich.

Since I didn’t get enough sleep on the flight to Doha, I tried to take a few naps after the meal services.

Not long before landing the cabin crew attempted to pitch some duty-frees by pulling a cartful of cosmetics all around the plane. Oh please, Qatar Airways, upgrade your personal entertainment pads so that everyone can order stuff on their screen, if you know how people find catering carts annoying when they are blocked by them.

We encountered some delay on the taxiways, but we still arrived 5 minutes early, which should give us more than enough time for the connection.

Flight PC4122 will be on the next post.
END