After flying Turkish Airlines’ Airbus A350 business class from Chicago to Istanbul, I visited the Turkish Airlines Lounge. While I’ve reviewed this lounge before, I was looking forward to checking out one unique amenity that was recently added, which sure indulges us avgeeks!
Turkish Airlines’ fascinating flight tracker
In May 2023, the Turkish Airlines Business Lounge Istanbul added an awesome new feature. Specifically, the lounge now has a 3D-flight tracker. No, the lounge doesn’t have a screen with Flightradar24, or something, but rather it has an interactive globe, which you can go up to and customize as you’d like.
Turkish Airlines flies to more countries than any other airline in the world, and this feature is intended to highlight that. The flight tracker shows the real-time locations of all Turkish Airlines aircraft worldwide, as well as weather conditions, and more.
If you’re in the Turkish Airlines Business Lounge Istanbul and want to find the flight tracker, just enter the lounge and turn right, and then after a short walk you’ll see it on the left.
If no one is using it, the globe will by default show how many Turkish Airlines aircraft are currently airborne.
Then once you touch the globe, you’ll see something pop up that lets you push one of several buttons. For example, you can push the “LIVE” button to see the location of all Turkish Airlines aircraft.
If you click that, you can then choose to see the location of all Turkish Airlines planes globally, or you can choose to see planes in just one region of the world.
It was fun to just select “ALL,” and then walk around the globe and see all aircraft currently airborne. It really puts into perspective just how much goes into running a global airline, when you think of the preparation required for each flight.
Bottom line
I love when airlines put some effort into the little details of the passenger experience. While Turkish Airlines’ flight tracker is a minor thing, it’s a lovely feature that us avgeeks will no doubt appreciate. Even when I’m not traveling, I’m constantly on Flightradar24, so it’s cool how the airline managed to add a flight tracking feature that further highlights Turkish Airlines’ biggest strength, which is its number of destinations.
Anyone else love this Turkish Airlines flight tracker feature?
The AA Museum outside of DFW has something similar. Not as interactive, but I believe it showed where all AA flights were at the moment.
Would've been a power play to show all aircraft on the globe, but only the TK aircraft in colour (the rest in grey, black, or white).
In a few years time - "We've got 800 aircraft. Try us, Air India!"
I'd buy a commercial version of that product. I could imagine a hardware company using the data from a "pro" subscription to flightradar24. That'd be neat.
If you like that, go visit the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago when you go there for your AV Geek Blogger's Seminar in September. It has tons of interactive things like the Globe in Turkey. Fascinating, one-of-a-kind museum.
I make sure my connection is more than 6 hours so I can take advantage of reserving a private room to sleep for 2-4 hours then take a nice warm shower for 1/2 hour & then after that to variety of food selection..
It’s My favorite lounge . I make sure my connection is more than 6 hours so I can take advantage of reserving a private room to sleep for 2-4 hours then take a nice warm shower for 1/2 hour & then after that to variety of food selection..
Very cool! Am I the only one who much preferred the old TK lounge though? Every time I've been to the new one it's outrageously crowded and all of the food has extremely long lines...
100% the old lounge was miles and more (hah) ahead of the new one, which is still fantastic by global standards of course. never felt crowded out in the old one, that's for sure. also never had food run out with a wait required there.
In the future, a third lounge called lounge exclusive will be opened in IST. There will be 3 international lounge; miles and smiles, business and exclusive. You can see location of new lounge from the turkish airlines website istanbul airport terminal map.
That is genuinely cool.