This was one of my previous flights that I decided to do a review on. Turkish Airlines flies to many destinations including off-beat ones such as Venezuela and Cuba. Even the big three Middle-Eastern airlines like Qatar, Emirates and Etihad do not fly to Cuba.

TK183 10:00 HAV- IST 09:15 (+1) with a stop in Caracas (CCS)

For my trip to Cuba in 2017, it was a complicated round-the-world flight itinerary. I flew from Singapore to Seoul (spent a few days there), then flew to Tokyo to board my trans-Pacific flight to Mexico City. From Mexico I flew on Interjet to Varadero in Cuba. On the return trip, I flew from Havana (capital of Cuba) to Istanbul, then onwards to Singapore. For the purpose of this review, I will only be focusing on the Havana to Istanbul segment, flown with Turkish Airlines.

As announced in December 2016, Turkish Airlines has started flying to Havana and Caracas, the airline’s 16th and 17th destinations in the Americas. The airline will fly three times weekly on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from Istanbul to Havana then to Caracas and back to Istanbul on flight TK183. They have been voted the best airline in Europe.

Since the flight is at 10am, I left my hostel at 6.30am to make my way to the airport. The taxi ride cost $25 while a bus ride to the airport is only $0.50, so I decided to go with the latter as I was only carrying my backpack. Look for the bus going in the direction of Boyeros. The bus was crowded due to the morning peak hour and I was extra careful with my belongings. The airport is located 15km from downtown Havana.

The bus ride took about 1 hour and having dropped off at the bus stop outside the airport, I had to walk an extra 15 minutes to the airport terminal. By the time I reached the terminal, it was 8.15am and there was a long queue to check in for Turkish Airlines. I decided to spend my remaining CUC (cuban convertible peso) on souvenirs such as T-shirts and postcards. Close to one hour before departure, there was still a long queue for the check in, so I went there and patiently waited in line. There was a German dude behind me with a huge surfboard and I chatted with him. He was unsure if the surfboard could be checked in or not.

I received both boarding passes, from Havana to Istanbul and Istanbul to Singapore. Immigration and security clearance was slow as well, with the group of people in front of me taking a long time. International Terminal 3 is the main international terminal, opened in 1998. It is the largest and most modern of all terminals. However, the Terminal 3 building was not that big and I could see my boarding gate just after the security checks.

At the departure area, I could see Cubana de Aviacion planes on the runway. This airport is the hub for its national airline and most of the airline’s fleet are old Russian planes, inherited from the Soviet era. Cubana operates flights to over 20 destinations in Cuba, Europe, the Caribbean, North, Central and South America.

Boarding commenced at 9.20am. There was a rush of passengers towards the boarding gate after the announcement was made, but there was no orderly arrangement to board according to seating groups.

The plane in economy class had a 2-3-2 seating configuration on an Airbus A332. There were many people of non-Cuban descent. I suppose flying is considered a luxury for many Cubans. From South Africans to Malagasy to Filipinos. Apparently, most of the passengers were working as crew on cruise ships and now they are on their way home to be reunited with their families. I had a hard time guessing the nationality of the Malagasy people because they don’t look distinctly African, they had Southeast Asian features like the Indonesians and they were speaking in a language that sounded like French but it is not. It intrigued me and out of curiosity, I asked them where they were from. This made me even more interested to visit Madagascar which I did in 2019 (read more here).

The girl seated beside me was a friendly South African. She was travelling to Cuba with her family for vacation. We had a great time chatting and I also shared with her my experiences of traveling in South Africa on two separate occasions. She is a entrepreneur with an online business and flew to Havana to attend her brother’s graduation ceremony, taking the opportunity to explore Cuba as well. Such is the pleasure of connecting with strangers and learning more about their stories.

The take off was slightly delayed due to additional safety checks. We took off at 10.10am. The plane would be making a stop in Caracas first, in South America before heading to Istanbul. However, the airline does not have traffic rights to transport passengers solely between Havana and Caracas. There were some passengers on the plane, who were on their way to Venezuela, so they sat on board the plane during its stop in Havana.

The inflight entertainment on TK was old and there was not much of a selection of movies. Nevertheless, I made use of the system to watch some movies because this is going to be a long flight home, 12 hours 30 minutes to be exact. Then at Istanbul airport, I would have a 4 hour 15 minute stopover before boarding my final flight segment home to Singapore.

When the plane landed at Caracas airport, some Europeans boarded the flight while a few passengers disembarked. Most of the passengers flying from Havana remained on board as their final destination was Istanbul, or connecting to other flights there. While other airports around the world (such as Singapore) expect transit passengers to get off the plane and go through security screening again while the plane is being cleaned, the authorities in Caracas allow the passengers to remain on board. There was also a change of crew as the new crew came on board in Caracas. Venezuela is also another country that I really want to visit, after reading many stories about the oil crisis and Angel Falls. However, due to the political turmoil and the inflation, I guess it is not a good time to visit for now. Even when I went to Colombia in 2018 and it was just neighbouring to Venezuela, I heard that the situation over there has became worse. Many Venezuelans have fled their country and seeked refuge in Colombia.

Cuba is a country of indefinable magic, from the capital Havana to the beach resorts of Varadero. Trapped in a time warp and reeling from an economic embargo that has grated for more than half a century, this is a country where you can wave goodbye to everyday assumptions and expect the unexpected. I hope to be back again in this Caribbean island charm, but for now the long flights halfway across the globe make it seem unlikely in the near future. It was a pleasure to fly with Turkish Airlines from Havana to Istanbul. (Update: I visited Dominican Republic in 2019, my second exploration into the Caribbean islands.)