I now have all flights booked and confirmed for my upcoming 2023 Central Asia and Türkiye World Trip.

While in a post COVID-19 major restrictions world airlines have limited their capacity to ensure they can both run scheduled flights and make profits to cover significant losses over the last three years I still managed to use award points for five international flights in Business Class.

Granted one of this is a short positioning flight from Singapore to Malaysia but the other four flights are 7 hours 50 minutes, 11 hours, 10 hours 30 minutes and 7 hours 45 minutes respectively so these long flights are ideal for business class.

The two economy flights are for 5 hours 5 minutes and 4 hours 10 minutes so hopefully I’ll survive being squashed into middle seats on Turkish Airlines for middle of the night flights!

• Singapore Airliness SQ208 Melbourne to Singapore (7 hours 50 minutes) – Business Class
• Singapore Airlines SQ392 Singapore to Istanbul (11 hours) – Business Class
• Turkish Airlines TK348 Istanbul to Bishkek (5 hours 5 minutes) – Ecomony Class
• Turkish Airlines TK323 Ashgabat to Istanbul (4 hours 10 minutes) – Economy Class
• Malaysia Airlines MH608 Singapore to Kuala Lumpur (1 hour 10 minutes) – Business Class
• Malaysia Airlines MH149 Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne (7 hours 45 minutes) – Business Class

I’ve updated my international flight journal in advance of these flights.

One very nice perk of flying Singapore Airlines from Singapore is their Book to Cook options, so the flight from Singapore to Istanbul has 31 supper options and 28 breakfast options!

Now up I’ll start doing more extensive research into the six new countries I’m visting and write up their histories before I leave late April 2023:

• Türkiye
• Kyrgyzstan
• Kazakhstan
• Tajikistan
• Uzbekistan
• Turkmenistan