Review: What’s It Like In Business Class On Turkish Airlines’ Airbus A321s?

Summary Turkish Airlines offers spacious business class seating on its widebody fleet for long-haul flights.
Unlike other European flag carriers, Turkish Airlines has dedicated business class cabins on its narrowbody fleet with larger and more spacious seating.
Turkish Airlines provides a full-service in-flight experience with a selection of Turkish food, entertainment options, and complimentary WiFi for business class passengers.
Turkish Airlines has a large fleet and operates many different aircraft. The airline offers direct flights from several UK airports to Istanbul. I recently flew one of the three daily Manchester to Istanbul flights. This was operated using the Airbus A321, giving a good test of its business class cabin on a decently long flight.
Turkish Airlines fleet and business class
Turkish Airlines operates a wide variety of aircraft types - both narrowbody and widebody. As you would expect, the whole long-haul widebody fleet offers spacious business class seating with lie-flat seats.
A large proportion of its narrowbody fleet (both Airbus A320 family and Boeing 737 family aircraft) offer dedicated business class cabins, with larger and more spacious seating than economy class. This contrasts with most European flag carriers, which tend to operate business class with the same seating as economy, with just a blocked middle seat.
Flying Turkish Airlines from the United Kingdom
Turkish Airlines flies several times daily from Manchester to Istanbul. It also operates from many other UK airports (including London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Birmingham, and Edinburgh). This contrasts flag-carrier British Airways, which only operates from London Heathrow. This flight was on the narrowbody Airbus A321, but the airline operates many of its flights with widebody aircraft (the schedule is generally quite accurate with minimal operational changes after booking). These flights would, of course, have full long-haul style lie-flay business class seating.
Photo: Karasev Viktor | Shutterstock
For this late afternoon flight, I arrived around two hours before departure and was checked in quickly and through to departures using the priority security area.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
Turkish Airlines uses the Aspire lounge in Manchester. As a third-party lounge (and open to paying customers and Priority Pass cardholders), this is usually busy. I was lucky at this time of year, and the lounge had plenty of space. There is a food buffet (again, acceptable if not too rushed) and a bar area.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
Business class seating on the Airbus A321
Turkish Airlines has a dedicated and fixed business class cabin on most of its narrowbody aircraft. The Airbus A321 is the most numerous in the fleet, with 60 A321 and 35 A321neo aircraft currently active (there are a staggering 196 A321neo on order as well). Some of the A321ceo fleet is fitted with flexible-style business class cabins with standard seating and blocked middle seats. The whole A321neo and a large part of the ceo fleet, however, offer the dedicated cabin.
Seating is arranged 2-2 (as opposed to 3-3 in economy), with seats offering at least 34 or 27 inches of seat pitch and a width of 20 inches. They offer good legroom, a fixed armrest, and a good-sized table.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
There are no real additional storage options as you would find with a long-haul seating product. At this size, these are not lie-flat business class seats but offer good recline and comfort for resting.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
This is in sharp contrast to most European airlines, including British Airways (its Club Europe cabin is pictured below). They generally use narrowbody aircraft for European routes, with identical economy- and business-class seating products. A moveable divider defines the cabin, and the front cabin will offer 2-2 seating by simply blocking the middle seats. This may be acceptable on a short flight, but to still use on these four-hour-plus routes is unfortunate.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
In-flight service and entertainment
Drinks (a selection of non-alcoholic juice blends) were offered upon boarding, and a full drink service was offered shortly after take-off. An evening meal followed, with three main options - grilled chicken brochette, grilled seabass, or an oven-baked aubergine dish.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
These were all accompanied by a selection of Turkish mezze and a traditional 'sutlac' desert. I like the real focus on Turkish food and ingredients - all the wine choices were from the country as well. The crew was attentive throughout the meal service but somewhat lacking in the cabin as soon as this was finished.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
There is a full entertainment package, similar to what you would find on long-haul flights. There are good-sized seatback screens, and good headsets were provided. Movie choices included several recent releases – I chose to (finally) watch the Barbie movie.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
WiFi is available, and business class passengers receive complimentary access (up to a certain limit). This is excellent for staying connected and sending messages, emails, or doing some trip planning, but it would not suffice for streaming etc.
Arrival into Istanbul
The flight time was shorter than booked, at just over three hours, getting into Istanbul over half an hour early. Some of this was then lost on the ground, with a taxi to the gate of over 20 minutes. As it happens, this was my first time using the new Istanbul Airport. Overall, it was an excellent new facility, but everything was massive. It battles with London Heathrow for the title of the busiest airport in Europe but also has ambitious plans to reach 100 million passengers by 2027.
Photo: Justin Hayward | Simple Flying
Walking through the single terminal (and to the metro) literally involved kilometers of hiking. It is undoubtedly an airport that makes an impression, but it may get tiresome to those who use it regularly. I am not generally a fan of large one-terminal airports (except perhaps Hong Kong International Airport). I just find the enormous distances involved tedious and hard to predict.
Want to see more of our trip reports - click here!
Have you flown Turkish Airlines business class recently - within Europe or further afield? How do you think it compares with other airlines? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform.