AtlasGlobal Review
AtlasGlobal (or formerly Atlasjet) has a troubled history of failed joint ventures and bankruptcies and restructuring since 2001. The company never reached critical mass and kept on scaling up and down over the years. Like AtlasGlobal several European carriers have been muddling through between charter, low price, no frills concepts often ended up stuck in the middle.
AtlasGlobal Review- AtlasGlobal Safety Record
ATlasGlobal had one fatal incident in 2007 in their entire history of operations. Now statistics can be rough to interpret but I CAN imagine this airline to be cutting corners - more likely with crew hours as well flight crew training than aircraft maintenance tough.
The airline isn't big and hasn't been around for a long time and already had a fatal incident.
However there seems to be no indication that the airline actually makes flying more risky - this is a completely subjective verdict.
What else is in this post?
- AtlasGlobal Review- AtlasGlobal Safety Record
- AtlasGlobal Review - Check-In
- AtlasGlobal Review - The flight
AtlasGlobal Review - Check-In
The AtlasGlobal iPhone app is a mess - it's only available in Turkish - my limited Turkish is good enough but the functionality is badly broken and the flight status function is just not working on an iPhone 5.
I did make a screen shot of my mobile boarding pass and nobody would scan it the whole day - but also would accept it every single time. How odd is that - I could have just made up the code!
I spent some time at the Priority Pass lounge at SAW airport which comes in a fresh design and has a number of decent sacks and drinks. However the Wifi would rarely go beyond a 1 Mbit connection - frustrating.
The flight would show as on-time until about an hours before departure only to show a one hour delay after that. Many planes were late that day because of the ATC restriction (though I wonder what happens on a rainy when things go haywire in these beautiful blue skies?).
One hour after the initial boarding time came and went I went down to the boarding gate. No gate agent - not a good sign.
No announcement no communication for another 60 minutes (it was now 80 minutes after our initial departure time) and the display changed to 2 hours of delay. Some soft drinks and sandwiches were distributed to keep the crowd complacent (which worked wonders - I was surprised).
AtlasGlobal Review - The flight
Finally about 2.5 hours after the initial departure time boarding would finally commence into crowded buses. The somewhat old but clean A321 would be ready at the furthest parking position this airport maintains.
Boarding was quick and we got going quickly once the doors closed. The flight crew profusely apologized for the late departure due to the late arriving aircraft. The ground crew insisted that the delay was due to ATC restrictions at SAW airport - oh well.
The flight attendants served a (edible) sandwich and drinks during the short flight (which must be rough for them).
Once landed AtlasGlobal offers a free bus transfer (ins a very new bus) for the 45 minute ride from Bodrum airport to the city of Bodrum.
AtlasGlobal Review - The verdict
AtlasAGlobal is a mixed bag - it does not have the best on-time performance in general and the (perceived) safety record isn't glorious. I was curious to try out as many airlines as possible during my time in Turkey but the long delay did not help.
If you have an alternative in the same price range and similar schedule you should avoid AtlasGlobal. The Turkish airline market is competitive and Pegasus and Turkish offer a quality product that I personally would trust more to get you to your destination safer and on-time more often.