Istanbul Airport, İstanbul, Turkey
Next leg I was travelling from Moscow to Oslo via Istanbul on Turkish Airlines collecting Star Alliance miles. My flight from Moscow was supposed to be 2am but they moved it up to 8pm cutting short my last day in Moscow. This meant I had a much longer layover in Istanbul for my morning onwards flight to Oslo.
Having had an 8 hour layover on my way in to Russia at Istanbul and my poor experience in April when I was transiting back from Baku and there were almost nowhere to sit I decided to pay for the lounge on this trip.
One of my cards allows me lounge access on the Priorty Pass program but Istanbul Airport is not part of the program. It was 59 Euros to get in for six hours.
I wanted to leave my hand luggage when I went in but couldnt find lockers, nor did staff know where they were even though I read online they had them. Then I had to find somewhere to sleep.
They only have six sleeping pods and luckily I was able to get one. However all night they were doing hammering, drilling, sawing, as construction at the new airport continued.
The buffet items were ok but hardly an all you can eat buffet restaurant. They were not filling meals and mostly snack items.
My other frustration was the wifi. Despite paying 59 Euros to come in the wifi would not connect. They kept blaming my device. They should just have free wifi instead of personalized passwords for each customer that I could not get to connect. Eventually I figured it out.
The showers were quite nice and allowed me to refresh. I had another 13 hour layover on my way back and would be staying here again.
See also video of stay - https://youtu.be/zaamrUFg9aQ
2025-05-23