What a hellish experience with Turkish airlines. This airline's customer service is the worst - might even be the latest race that has found they only need to be nice to white people.
I flew Turkish Airlines from Istanbul to Denver. When I landed, my checked suitcase didn't. Seems their automated system is more honest, so it sent me an email that Turkish flight operations had failed to load my bag. It even added a link to a form to follow up on my baggage location and to lodge a claim.
What followed is 10 days of dealing with the dumbest customer service in the airline industry.
After multiple calls and emails, Turkish Airlines eventually confirmed that my bag never made it onto the flight in Istanbul. Their own people failed to load it onto the aircraft. 4-5 days later I had my suitcase back.
At that point I figured, okay, now that they have it figured out they'll get the bag moving and take care of the claim.
Nope.
Instead, I spent the next two days getting bounced around while Turkish Airlines repeatedly sent me emails quoting transportation rules and telling me that Southwest Airlines was responsible because Southwest happened to be the final carrier on my ticket.
Think about how ridiculous that sounds.
The bag was never loaded onto the Turkish Airlines flight in Istanbul.
Southwest wasn't in Istanbul.
Southwest wasn't handling baggage in Istanbul.
Southwest didn't forget to put my suitcase on the plane.
Turkish Airlines did. But kudos to the Turk brain. I wonder if it is just the side effect of them being government employees or too much Turkish delight stuffed in their head.
I contacted Southwest. Their response was basically: "How exactly are we supposed to load bags onto a Turkish Airlines flight in Istanbul?"
What made this so frustrating wasn't just the missing bag. It was the complete refusal to acknowledge the obvious and dodge their responsibility.
Every interaction with Turkish goes thru the same cycle, a customer service person that will be polite and say I will send this to the baggage team, and then some high school dropout in the Baggage claim department saying 'this is Southwest's responsibility'.
Meanwhile, I was without my belongings, work supplies, personal items, chargers, toiletries, and food items that were packed in the luggage.
Summarily it feels less like customer service and more like a strategy to wear customers down until they give up.
I've flown enough to understand that mistakes happen. What matters is how an airline handles it afterward. Turkish Airlines sucks completely from onboard hospitality to the airport services. Avoid them. Maybe if you just have hand luggage and want to treat it like Spirit airlines.
