Two hours before tanks hit the streets of Istanbul in a failed coup attempt in which hundreds of people were killed across Turkey, US law student Kate Akkaya boarded a flight from Istanbul to Paris to visit a friend.
“If I had any idea there could have been a coup attempt, I would have left much sooner,” Akkaya said.
Akkaya, a Chicago native who grew up in New Jersey, had spent six months in Turkey for a study abroad program. Akkaya’s five-year-old son, Gabriel, had left Turkey with his father the previous day.
“It was a little too close for comfort,” Akkaya said.
Akkaya landed in Paris and received a flurry of messages from concerned friends and family members.
“The first few messages were from a security firm that’s contracted by the university to take care of those of us abroad,” Akkaya said. “They said are you ready to shelter in place? That’s not a question I’ve ever asked myself before.”
Originally, Akkaya planned to spend the weekend in Paris. She was due back in Istanbul a few days later to catch a flight to Boston, via Frankfurt.
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“My family started saying, ‘you’re not going back to Istanbul, are you?’” Akkaya recalled.
The failed coup resulted in thousands of arrests in Turkey. Meantime, the US government prohibited airline carriers from flying into the US from Turkey either directly or via a third country. While some airlines resumed service, the US government was urging travelers to work with their airlines to find alternate routes.
Akkaya stayed in Paris.
She had no laptop. No birth certificate. And only one change of clothes.
Akkaya said she tried contacting her airline carrier, Lufthansa, to change her upcoming flight. However, she said the calls would drop. So Akkaya contacted her cousin, Jim Kaboski, to see if he could help.
“I used to travel a lot and have a lot of status with airlines, plus, I think, the fact that I was in the US, she said something about it was really expensive trying to be on hold on a cell phone in Europe,” Kaboski said.
Kaboski contacted Lufthansa and asked if his cousin could board the second segment of her scheduled flight in Frankfurt to avoid having to re-enter Istanbul.
“They said she could pick up the flight in Frankfurt, but it was going to be $3600, and I said, ‘you got to be kidding me,’” Kaboski said.
Kaboski relayed the information to Akkaya, who cancelled her Lufthansa flight.
“I don’t understand why you’d have to pay for something like that when I already booked it,” Akkaya said.
Fortunately, Kaboski had enough mileage points on another carrier to fly his cousin to Boston.
“To be honest, if I would have had to spend the $3600 and that was the only option, that’s what I would have done,” Kaboski said. “There’s no way she was going back to Turkey.”
Akkaya said she asked for a refund from Lufthansa and was not given a clear answer.
Kaboski later contacted NBC 5 Responds about his cousin’s situation with Lufthansa. While the airline declined to comment about the $3600 price to modify Akkaya’s flight, it issued her a $741.28 refund for the original roundtrip ticket.
“It’s just unbelievable that it really has to go this far for them to pay attention to that,” Akkaya said. “It shouldn’t be this complicated.”
