Air Turkey is looking cheapest at the mo,
Emirates etc worth the £100’sih upgrade?

18hr’ish flight time, any tips to leave UK early or late and sleep on the flights?

Thanks!

Wrong forum sos!

We flew out of Heathrow about half nine at night, frantic transfer at Beijing then landed at Tokyo about half ten at night their time, not much sleep on the flight so a dash to the hotel and head down for a few hours worked for us. 🙂

Was that with BA?

Nah, Air China – food was all right on the way out, pretty dire on the way back. 🙁

You’ll get less leg room with a Chinese airline (assuming you’re going economy). Turkish are supposed to be pretty good from work colleagues that have flown them. Emirates are good, but Qatar is better. Benefit of Emirates and Qatar are the number of UK airports they fly out of assuming you don’t live near the London airports.

Edit: if it where me I’d pay an extra £100 for Emirates vs Turkish

Air Turkey – that’s hopefully very cheap !! How many stops though 2 ?
How do Emirates or Cathay look ? We’ve used Qatari and Abu Dhabi carriers before for Asia long haul, a bit so so and Qatar transfers are spectacularly poorly organised but planes are modern.

I have only ever done it for work in business with BA so not really able to assist.

Long-distance economy travel tips I learned when flitting between Aberdeen and various cities in SE Asia.
1 – Join KLM/Air France’s Flying Blue club (costs nowt) = entry to the Flying Blue lounge as long as you have a KLM/AF ticket, free food and drink. Great if you have long stopovers.
2 – If you can get a flight with KLM via Schipol, you can change your seats up to 20 minutes before boarding. I managed to get a centre row of 4 seats to myself a few times = lots of room to sleep in comfort, much to the annoyance of everyone else on the plane.
3 – Avoid Vietnam Airlines regardless of how cheap they are. Don’t ask, just avoid.

Thanks All, I need to get my head around the flight times, I’m only looking at going for 4/5 nights but need to account for the 18 odd hours to a from. Air Turkey was a one stop at Istanbul

18h flight time? Are you going by blimp or via mexico or something? All the mainstream european carriers are much of a muchness, virgin was our favourite if heathrow is ok, KLM/Schipol was 2nd choice and works well for regional UK airports.