- Today, we're going to fly on Turkish Airlines to Istanbul.
The flights are quite full.
There's almost 300 passengers.
- What would you like to drink?
- The welcome drinks they used to have.
- I'm sorry. Just after the pandemic--
- We did a big turn over to downtown in Dubai.
(upbeat music)
They give you a boxed meal to reduce contact.
They don't serve you course by course.
I love the chef.
Where is the chef? - Yay!
- They were after me, I didn't make a mess inside.
This is not enough for a big guy like me.
There's a blanket but there's no pillow.
Do you see lots of passengers, they don't wear masks,
they lower their masks.
(upbeat music)
(rumbling)
Thank you.
Good morning.
I'm showing my PCR test results at the check-in.
Today, we're going to fly on Turkish Airlines to Istanbul.
It's been more than one and a half years,
since my last flight in Turkish Airline.
Can't wait to check out what they have right now.
(upbeat music)
It's 7:30 at Dubai Airport, it's pretty busy.
You know, even though there are lots of travel restrictions,
and I am travelling today to Turkey for work.
(upbeat music)
That was a really long walk.
It's almost like one end to the other end of Dubai airport.
And now we're going to get on board,
the B777-300/ER, Turkish Airlines.
(bright music)
Good morning. - Good morning.
Welcome on board.
Hygiene kits for you. - Hygiene kits?
- Yes, sir. - Oh, okay. Thank you.
- [Flight Attendant] Welcome.
- Hello. Welcome aboard.
- Morning. Welcome aboard. - Good morning.
It's been a while since I came onboard Turkish Airlines.
The 232 on the 777, wide space seat.
(upbeat music)
- Hello, good morning.
(speaking in foreign language)
I'm Captain Leven Lapitulaf.
I'm here with my colleague.
Kristoff Zarayka. - Hi.
- And then, Captain Muratz. - Hi.
- We are operating today,
flight 763 from Dubai to Istanbul.
Today's flight time is four hours and twenty minutes.
Weather conditions here are very good.
We will depart from runway one to right
and make a right turn like the, the Arabian sea.
And then, past the Arabian Gulf,
and enter into Turkey via Iraq.
Flight level today will be 36,000 feet,
flight level is 360
and the speed will be Mach .83.
We can start the (indistinct) facing east.
(plane engine roars)
- Wow, I was surprised.
The flight are quite full,
there's almost three hundred passengers,
all nationality going to transit Istanbul.
They just restarted this flight since December.
(upbeat music)
- Take off (indistinct)
(clicking)
Stabilised.
- Checked. (indistinct)
(plane engine noise)
- D1.
(indistinct)
(upbeat music)
We had a pretty clear morning.
We just took off.
And then, we did a big turn over to downtown in Dubai
and then, we flew over the World Islands.
So, it was a nice sightseeing routes out of Dubai.
Oh, this is what I'm doing.
Taking picture of all the products to share
with you, the information.
Very typical stuff, hand sanitizer wipes.
And of course mask, I noticed all the flight attendants.
They don't wear PPE, not even gloves, just a mask.
So, it's quite different to the one in the golf
and in Asia, where they have full PPE,
the visor, gloves.
- Sir, welcome right here.
What would you like to drink with your meal?
- [Man] Do you guys still have those,
you know, the welcome drinks
they used to have all those very colourful cocktail.
Yeah. I always liked them.
- I'm sorry, just because after pandemic,
I can serve you some orange juice,
apple juice, or peach juice, if you want.
- [Man] Just orange juice, please.
- Sure.
(upbeat music)
Enjoy.
- So, as you can see the boxed meal here, this is one area
in the service area.
During the cold, the airline has changed
they give you a boxed meal to reduce contact
and leave it on your table.
And then, they don't serve you.
Course by course,
which Turkish Airlines is actually really famous for,
all four cuisine.
Airlines these days are losing billions of dollars.
So, they're looking at a lots of area for cost cutting.
The bit of good news I heard is,
for flight over eight hours,
they're actually bringing back the hot meals,
but eventually, I hope they can even bring back hot meals
on shorter sector like this one.
I love the chef.
Where is the chef? - Yeah.
- The chef is missing. - I knew you were a chef.
And I used to be a chef, one time.
I was cooking here.
Learning how to do the eggs.
- [Flight Attendant] But, just because after pandemic,
during pandemic,
there is no customer for the chefs on the flight.
- No chef right now.
- Yeah, for right now,
but we're hopeful they are coming back.
- Right, right, right. (laughing)
- Hi, sir. - Hi.
- I need to clean the toilet, sir.
- Oh, you're cleaning toilet.
- Yeah. - You know after me,
I didn't make a mess inside.
- After every person here, in business class, I do it.
- Oh, after everyone.
- Yeah. - In business class,
you do this.
(carefully wiping)
(upbeat music)
- I was impressed, but,
how often do you do economy class toilet?
You can't do every passenger.
There'll be 300 of them using them.
- After every five passenger.
- [Man] After every five passenger.
- Or every 30 minutes.
- [Man] Or every 30 minutes.
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)
- [Man] Other than eating or drinking.
Do you see a lot of passengers?
They don't wear a mask.
They lowered their mask, to sleep and all that
- Actually you're right,
because sometimes we can see some passengers
wearing not mask, but, every 15 minutes,
we are walking around in the cabin
for checking the masks with covering both nose and mouth.
- [Man] What if the passenger refused to wear a mask?
- He must.
It's not possible they not-- He must.
Some, we are still keeping the distance from the passengers
while contact.
But, we are keeping the smile behind our masks.
- [Man] Me too.
I have a smile. (laughing)
That's called "smice."
So, you can see our eyes now.
Do you still do your makeup? - Every time.
- Do you still wear lipstick inside?
- Yeah, we're wearing that. - Okay.
You know, the mask for me.
I like it is, when I lower it, I cover up my double chin.
- Sir, wear your mask.
- Oh, yeah. Wear my mask. (laughing)
(upbeat music)
We're just going to go down
to check out economy class and you can see actually here
the seats are three, three, three.
It will be wider than a usual three, four, three,
on the 777 economy.
Hey, good morning, how are you?
Just want to check.
What kind of food you serve in the economy?
Because I know it's a boxed meal in business class.
Can I see the food?
- Yeah, okay. - Okay.
- So, water is here - Oh, it's a bag.
- Yeah, it's a bag. - Oh, wow.
So, you just give the bag to the passenger.
- Yeah.
- What do they have inside?
- We have this, it's a turkey sandwich.
- A turkey sandwich.
- (indistinct) Cake. - You have a cake.
- We have juice.
- Okay.
Juice.
- Then, we have bottle. Yeah. - Water.
- While looking at this clearly,
this is not enough
for a big guy like me.
- [Flight Attendant] Of course, we can bring you,
a second meal or you can bring your own food.
Doesn't matter. Yeah.
(plane engine roaring)
- I'm just going to take a little nap
but, there was no pillow as well.
There's a blanket but there is no pillow.
For this business class,
as you know, two, three, two, is a little bit narrow.
The disadvantage is you have to hop across your neighbour
to get out, right.
Especially, if you're stuck
in the middle seat, in the middle.
However, every seat has pros and cons.
The advantage this seat has,
many didn't realise is on your leg.
Your leg, there's nothing on top of your leg.
There's no table, no console.
So, you can freely turn around on your way to sleep.
So, you know, if nobody's sitting next to you,
like my flight is coming really good.
(upbeat music)
(plane noise)
(indistinct)
- [Man on speaker] 100. 50. 40. 30. 20. 10.
(upbeat music)
- [Man] So, there you go.
We just landed at Istanbul, had a big taxi
around the huge airport I'm coming here, actually for work.
I'll be presenting a cargo conference
in a few days at Istanbul.
The flight is really very, very quiet.
It's very ordinary, but I'm glad to check out
what Turkish airlines offer so far.
- They'll come Istanbul.
I hope that you enjoyed this flight with Turkish Airlines.
We managed to land well ahead
of the scheduled time of arrival.
That's because during these COVID times,
the airspace is not very busy,
and we got a lot of direct routing, making us land
to around 35 minutes ahead of the scheduled time
of arrival that saved us a lot of fuel.
On top of that, we used to (mumbles) 25 today,
for the approach that saved us again, some fuel
and we text it in with one engine only.
That means overall, we had the fuel saving
of around one and a half pounds because in Turkish Airlines,
we are very committed to environment protection
and to reduce the carbon footprint.
And so by doing so, we like to contribute also
for the environmental protection.
They often do enjoy the sites
and I hope to see you in another Turkish Airlines.
Thank you. (speaking in foreign language)
- So, I was presenting cargo talks
by Turkish cargo as a percenter
and I met the Turkish Airline Chairman, Mr. Iiker Ayci,
Mr. Ayci actually demonstrated about the current wind change
in aviation, how you can quickly adopt yourself
and what Turkish airlines has done?
And he also answered a response
about the cost cutting and take a look at this interview.
It was very interesting.
- What you do is
in order to save yourself because the ocean will take you.
So, what you do is just to go with the safer store, right?
Safer, right?
Three seconds ago,
this one is the safer one, three seconds later,
will not be the safest run.
- You will change. - Well, now,
you have to change.
You have to look at it.
And you got to (mumbles) how to change.
And out the back.
You understand?
The decision-makers right now in the world,
what they have to do is, is like
just watch the weight and feel it and watch the tight ways.
And always try to change.
And you have to be smart and quick.
That's why otherwise you could think
that the old times it goes
like this and you'll make your plan.
This is the safest one.
No, you can't be successful like this.
You need to be very quick, very fast.
(upbeat music)
- [Man] Have you received any government bail out
during the crisis?
- [Iiker] You know, we didn't take any bailouts
during that processes.
Only, we got also short-term support
for the labour intensive jobs.
We didn't get any bailout plan.
We didn't get any capitalization.
We didn't get any capitalization by the government.
And what we did is we made our plan, our turnaround plan,
our cost cutting plan.
We are publicly listed company
and very transparent to our shareholders,
very transparent to our crew, our staff as well.
And we put the numbers
to them and said that, "Hey guys, this is a situation."
We don't want any lay offs in the company.
We don't want to do the same thing
like other companies did in the world right now.
We don't want any to lay offs
because you are the most valuable asset of this company.
We brought this brand, that level
in the world right now together.
We got together and made a mutual agreement
and in this mutual agreement, we just put it there.
As long as the crisis is ongoing, no layoffs.
And we'll keep everyone in the company.
We will stand no one behind us.
So all the staff will be together, but we made some trims
but a sliding scale
and our staff accepted it and they supported it.
- [Man] What about the food?
When are you bringing back hot meals?
Is there any plan for that?
- [Iiker] Starting from April
and things will be different in the international flights.
Again, the hot meal will come back very soon
and also in the only short-haul flights,
we will be a little bit more cautious again.
But if you have seen that the normalisation
and the vaccination is increasing and health care.
Our healthcare consultants confirmed that you can continue
and get back to also a larger selection of catering.
Again, we'll do it for sure.
- [Man] You convert a lot of freighter, freighters.
So, can you talk about a little bit
- [Iiker] Yeah, I don't like - [Man] about the toggle side
- [Iiker] about the sleeping beauties.
Especially, when they are very expensive, very immediately,
we switch them and then, we change our mentality
and mindset and try to adapt ourselves to the new situation.
Hey guys, we have to think faster than the virus
and we have to adapt ourselves
to this new market conditions faster
than the virus,
and then, behave use, at this 50 aircraft,
I'm on the passenger fleet.
We put them to the cargo
and the cargo capacity then increased.
And we did a great job into 2020.
- I hope you enjoy listening to this business insight
and I hope you enjoy the video.
(outro plays)