Flight

I have an announcement to make: we are only flying Turkish Airlines from now on—regardless of cost. I was delighted to find a good deal on the airline because I’ve had such good experiences flying it, and I knew it would be the way to go for Turk’s first overseas flight. Turkish Airlines is superior to American airlines in so many ways. It actually has legroom (which is huge), we got individual TVs with on-demand movies and TV in both English and Turkish, and the service is excellent. For example, they only had one seat available for a bassinet, so we decided we’d rather sit by each other. The airline actually reserved a seat between us for Turk so we’d have enough room. Neither E nor I got to stretch out on the flight, but Turk happily slept most of the way lying on his own seat.

Sadly, I did have a person sitting next to me. It was a college-age American girl who killed me with her arrogance. The flight crew told her at least three times to turn off her computer and phone for takeoff. She put her phone on vibrate and then hid her computer under a blanket whenever they came by so she could continue to send emails during takeoff. I was appalled and glad the plane didn’t crash. I actually hoped that someone so self-absorbed wouldn’t want to sit next to a baby, but she didn’t move and slept through the entire flight.

The other incident of note was a family of four sitting behind us. They were flying back to India with their two teenage daughters, one who was developmentally delayed. The daughter threw up (like massive vomiting) not once, not twice, but three times on the flight. That meant the entire time we were blessed with the aroma of vomit and cleaning fluid. I couldn’t blame the girl, but I also could not understand why her parents were never prepared for the PIs (puking incidents). Shouldn’t they have had barf bags on hand?

I was happy we were able to break our travel with some time in DC, but I was also happy when we got to the airport in Istanbul. It took Turk and me at least an hour longer to go through passport hoops than E, but it was worth the journey to see the joy on E’s family’s faces when we walked through the door and they saw Turk for the first time.