Easily our worst travel experience was in the Istanbul Airport, where after I growled at the customer “service” representative for his complete inconsideration, I sat down on the floor as though I received a gut punch to the stomach. Knowing that a violent rage was swelling up inside of me, I dismissed myself from the line, passed him off to my wife, and sat down in the middle of the floor, watching as the world whirled around my head, seeing the shimmering strains of a migraine aura as they reached their claws across my vision.
I’d have to shake it off. I had to keep it together. My three-year-old was right there beside me, completely not understanding what just happened.
I had to set a better example than this. This public, infantile pouting at my loss. But then, knowing how pathetic I looked only compounded the utter feeling of helplessness and uselessness.
I suppose we’ve all had that feeling. Haven’t you?
Here’s how it happened.
The Istanbul Airport Design Scam
Upon some introspection, I can admit where I was at fault. But I also think the Istanbul Airport was purposefully designed to highlight those faults and make money off it.
Now, I admit, I can’t prove anything. I’ve searched Kaggle and BigQuery and can’t find any hard data on missed flights in Istanbul. I doubt it’s public-source info anyway.
So, hear me out.
It’s huge
Every time we’ve flown through Istanbul—and living in Brussels but being based in Tbilisi meant we’ve flown though it A LOT—they’ve never even been able to post the gate or terminal info of any connecting flight until 30 minutes before boarding. Of course, the sign tells you “1 hour”, but that’s until takeoff, a completely irrelevant number when it comes to hauling your ass to your connection.
That means you typically have 30 minutes to get to your next gate. Maybe 45 minutes if you’re lucky.
The entire airport is set up like a wheel spoke. There’s one massive central terminal, which is like the size of a small city or gigantic shopping mall, filled with shops and restaurants, and the there’s five super long concourses (what is the difference between a concourse and a terminal, anybody?).
To get across that central terminal… you can rush across it with a child, from one concourse to the opposing concourse, in maybe 20 minutes. That doesn’t leave you a hell of a lot of time.
It’s family friendly
So, I’ve mentioned the part where it’s huge and they only tell you where your connection is with thirty minutes to go. That means if you’re dallying in one concourse or the next, for any reason, you’re probably going to miss your boarding time.
But here’s the kicker: it’s a really amazingly family-friendly place. The entire airport was built around distracting your children. Each concourse has a cool little indoor playground, with slides, see-saws, and rocket ship climbing frames, and then the central terminal is lined with toy shops (or shops with toys).
Do you see where I’m going with this?
When you arrive, you generally follow the herd towards the central terminal. After the 15-minute walk, you come to the chart with the flight information that inevitably says, “Flight information unknown; wait for update 1 hour before flight”.
So, then you think, “Okay, what else is there to do? We’ll let the kiddo play.”
Mistake #1.
We let our kiddo play. And this was dumb, because we know full well that once he warms up to a playground, separating him from that place is always a hellish nightmare of torment and bickering and wailing and gnashing of teeth and all that Biblical jibbajabba that defines something bad, and you don’t want to go through it.
No messing around
And when we saw the update, we initially thought, “Oh, an hour to get to the gate, that’s not too bad, we can take our time.”
No, you can’t.
It’s not an hour until boarding, it’s an hour until takeoff, and they aren’t messing around about that time.
We finally yanked the kiddo off the climbing frame and trundled along into the main, massive complex that I’ve already described as the main terminal. The place is beautiful, a huge central lobby area with a mezzanine looking down, both levels lined with shops, restaurants, trees, etc., something that gives me the feeling of how space stations or Mars base might one day look if humans are lucky (the other option in aesthetics is the Nostromo).
We still thought we had some time, though we knew we had to get moving. The kid though ran into one of the toy stores, and here again we were faced with a dilemma. Retrieve a screaming kid who really wants to look at toys (not even necessarily by them, but just really get a good, good look at every friggin’ option that there is in the entire shop before becoming too overwhelmed with a choice that he doesn’t have anything before finally deciding that he must have a 10 cent dinosaur figure and then hollering if we don’t even get him that). I know you know what I’m talking about, if you, dear reader, are a parent.
Then we made it to the concourse. 30 minutes to spare. There was another playground that he ran into. Okay, we could let him play for 10 minutes.
But wait. My travel-addled mind was nagging me about something. I looked at my watch, trying to handle the time changes in my head. I looked at my phone. It hadn’t updated. Or maybe it did? Or it didn’t. Feck, what time was it anyway?
Then I glanced at the chart. “Now boarding”.
Shit. Where’d my wife go?
Alarm mode. I grabbed the kid, found the wife in the nearest shop, and we raced down to the end of the concourse. Still 10 minutes to spare. But everything was dark and closed, and nobody was there. What the hell had happened? The plane was still there.
We knocked on the door. Tugged it. Another Russian lady ran up too, cursing.
Finally, a stewardess appeared. “We have boarded.”
“Yes, we can see that; can we get on?” we pleaded with her.
“Yes, you can go and talk to the customer service desk.”
I looked around. There wasn’t one nearby.
“But can’t we just get on? The plane is right there.”
The stewardess nodded with an empty smile. “Yes, yes, go talk to the customer service desk.”
It was like the last two pieces of a puzzle didn’t fit and you had already put the entire thing together. But why didn’t these last two pieces fit? “What are you talking about? Just open the door and let us on. The plane is right there. I see the plane. It’s not leaving for another 10 minutes.”
“Yes, yes,” she answered in agreement. “Just go talk to the customer service desk. It’s near the terminal.”
“But by then you will have taken off,” I said.
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I must go.” I'm a big believer in the Power of Yes, but to hear her bastardize that word so much really made me grit my teeth. She opened the exit door and slid into the narrow crack, closing it swiftly behind her. It was perhaps my imagination, but I could have sworn I heard a locking bolt sliding into place.
So-called customer service
And now here we are. I’m sitting on the floor next to the customer service desk. My mind was full of additional pieces that just didn’t fit. The guy had first told me it would cost nine hundred dollars to rebook the two-hour flight to Batumi. That was a bit jarring.
“But I could just get our stuff, we could go to the bus station and take a bus. That’d be like 200 bucks max,” I told him. I knew that was true too, I’ve ridden that bus half a dozen times. Getting there wouldn’t be a problem, even with a kid. We’d just call an Uber.
“Then we’d have to cancel your entire flight,” he said.
“Right,” I said, narrowing my eyes, trying to see the fault there.
“Including your return flight.”
“Ah, erm, why?”
“That’s Turkish Airlines policy, sir,” he said.
“But how does it cost 900 dollars to get to Batumi? Just let us get our luggage.”
"No, sir, we’d cancel your entire flight. Pay 900 now or you don’t know what it will cost when you’re coming back.”
My eyes bulged. Now the guy was threatening me.
“It’s 900 now, it could go up at any time,” he said.
I felt nauseous. I didn’t really have 900 bucks. I only had it in “funny money”, lala land money that doesn’t exist on my credit card.
“Oh, look, it’s 1200 now,” he said.
“WHAT?!” I lost it. I knew I shouldn’t have lost it, but I did. “What the fuck?” Oh, that’s where my kid learned that phrase. “What the fuck?! You just said it was 900?!”
“It’s going up sir,” he said. Was that a smirk on his face?
Somewhere, vaguely, as though reaching through some clouds of perception, as though it were part of someone else’s body, I could feel my wife tugging at my arm, pleading with me to be cool.
“Screw it,” I said. “You deal with the guy.” And I stormed off like the 40-year-old toddler I am.
A night’s stay
We had until 6 the next morning for the next flight to Batumi.
It wasn’t until after our 60 euro Arby’s meal for three—Arby’s! The only places I’ve encountered Arby’s outside of the US have been Turkish airports!—that I realized that I remembered something something about lounge access at airports. I pulled out my phone to read the bennies and there it was:
And they had a lounge at the Istanbul Airport. When we walked in, I cursed myself for not thinking of that early. They had an all-you-can-eat buffet, an all-you-can-drink bar, billiards, a kiddie room (that’s frankly nowhere near as appealing as those little kid traps in the concourses) and a stellar view of the plebs down below.
After this trip, we made sure to have 4-hour layovers in Istanbul every time. No chance of missing our flight and every chance to stock up on delicious Turkish food and sweets and beer. I mean, Efes ain’t the best, but it ain’t bad either. Especially when it’s free!
The catch was that we could only stay for three hours. Then we had to move downstairs to a couch with the rest of the stragglers. But that wasn’t a huge issue. We found somewhere with room enough for our young one to spread out on caught some shut eye.
I was most impressed by how the kiddo was handling everything. Was it that he had utter faith in us, despite the Big Guy having a meltdown? Or did he just not know any better?
I patted his head, pushed his fluffy hair behind his ear and smiled. It’d be all right.
A Facetious Guide to Traveling with a Kid
Stay tuned for my upcoming book, A Facetious Guide to Traveling to Traveling with a Kid, where I include various humorous anecdotes and tips on what not to do when jaunting across the world with your tyke! Good reading for new parents, soon-to-be-parents, and a great gift for your friend who’s about to pop one out! Sign up for the newsletter to be sure when it comes out.
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