I'm looking to travel w/ Turkish airlines on a ZED Fare and was looking to list on one of their flights. However, when I called them, I spoke with three different people and they did not understand the concept of "listing for a flight" and their English was very marginal.

Do you guys know if, in general, it may be possible to list for a flight from the ticket counter with some of these foreign carriers?

I'm flying to IST w/ Delta from JFK, and transferring to a Turkish flight to Tbilisi, Georgia but don't want any hiccups along the way or I'll be stuck in Istanbul for the night.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

 

I have always been able to list at a ticket counter. If they prefer that I use a phone umber, they will usually provide it for future reference. I suppose you could have problems if a particular service rep has never seen a ZED before...all part of the fun of non-reving off the beaten path I guess.

Obviously arrive early.

 

Yeah.....that's my concern.

I'm only gonna have 3 hours in between flights and it probably won't work out. I've been to Istanbul before and it's kinda hard to find people who speak English at that airport. I didn't want this to become a 3-day trip.

edit: on a sidenote, I'll probably try the ticket counter at JFK before leaving (if I have enough time). I'm trying to leave on my last day of work, so everything's pretty tight.

 

It's been my experience ZED'ing that it's mostly just north american and western european carriers that want you to list beforehand. Most of the others, you can just show up at the counter with your ZED pass and if there are seats they'll put you on. If you're calling reservations and they have no idea what "listing" is, that's a pretty good indication that the airline is in the latter group.

By the way, which Turkish Airlines number are you calling? You may be best off calling one of their ticket offices in the US directly rather than a central reservation number.

 

As posted above, you might want to get a hold of a US phone number for Turkish and deal with them rather than actually dealing with someone overseas.

It's a pain in the neck sometimes, but as mentioned before it is just part of the fun of ZEEEEEEEding!

Good Luck.

TI

 

So worst case scenario you must overnight in Instanbul.... maybe you should hope for this. Consider it and added bonus and make the most of it.

 

A footnote, if you do get in touch with anyone from Turkish in the US and they don't know what a ZED fare is, just tell them it is the same as an ID90. They all know what that is. Good luck, have fun.

 

Agreed. Unexpectedly spent the night in Mexico City and it was the highlight of my vacation!

 

Thanks for the replies. Just an update on the process...

Things went well. I'm in Tbilisi now and the whole ZED thing with Turkish was probably the most smooth check-in I've ever experienced. I swear it took under 3 minutes after getting to the ticket counter in IST when I had a boarding pass in hand with a seat assignment. It went well. I didn't have to explain anything apart from telling her I was an airline employee traveling on a ZED fare and that I wanted to catch the 1PM flight to TBS.


P.S.-Turkish Airlines offers open bar to all passengers, so make the most of it! Kinda funny to see so many people hitting the FA call buttons to ask for more beer.

I called the 1-800 number and I also called the NYC office along w/ the JFK office. None of them answered except the 1-800 number.

Hehe, I wasn't really hoping to overnight. I've been to Istanbul before to visit a good friend, but this time my purpose was going to Tbilisi to see the girlyfriend with my 8 days off, so I was trying to avoid losing a day.

Thanks, I'll take note for future reference.