Chasing all six inhabited continents in one challenge sounds glamorous. In practice, it looked like a passport hunt at 1h45 before departure, a closed Heathrow tunnel, and a train that terminated short of the airport because Terminal 2/3 station was overcrowded. That was the opening act of this instalment of a blogger's six-continent quest, which covered South America and Europe in one sweep.
The plan was tidy on paper: an Avios-booked Aer Lingus hop to Dublin, then Turkish Airlines Dublin–Istanbul–Bogotá return, ticking off South America outbound and Europe on the way home. Reality was less tidy. Arriving at Heathrow 28 minutes before departure, with no boarding pass available and a supervisor declining to rebook to Dublin, the trip collapsed. The backup options evaporated until Turkish advised calling customer service to be offloaded — at which point a lucky break appeared. An earlier schedule change had been resolved with the airline a month prior, but the online travel agency was still showing free cancellation a mere four hours before the flight. Full refund taken, and the whole itinerary rebuilt.
The second attempt started at 4:30am at Luton for a Wizz Air flight to Vilnius, whose departure was cheaper than Dublin-to-Bogotá had become. A pleasant afternoon in Vilnius, then Turkish via Istanbul, where a ten-hour layover unlocked a free stopover hotel — with VIP transfer, albeit a very short night. Bogotá was reached without drama, a personal first for South America, with just 24 hours on the ground planned.
Then came the surreal part: a text the next morning announcing that flight TK800 had made a forced landing in Istanbul, and instructing the passenger not to leave the airport — thirteen hours before departure. The delay stretched the Bogotá visit to 31 hours, swallowed a Panama City stop, and totalled 17 hours on board. The silver lining was real, though: €600 compensation under Turkish's version of EC261, plus extra hours in Colombia's capital.
The return leg showed why the whole exercise is worth study. Turkish's multi-city booking tool prices open-jaw itineraries as two halves of a return, making creative routings genuinely affordable. The inbound was booked to Copenhagen for the same price as Vilnius, and a missed BA connection was salvaged by rebooking on SAS for just 5,500 Flying Blue points. Five continents down, one to go.
Why does this matter to ordinary travellers? Because the lessons are transferable. Book flexible fares or watch for OTA cancellation windows after airline schedule changes. Turkish's free layover hotel on long Istanbul connections is a legitimate money-saver. Know your compensation rights when flights go badly — 17 hours onboard can pay out handsomely. And keep points balances warm across alliances, because a 5,500-point rescue fare beats a walk-up price every time. Even the packing procrastination is a lesson: lounge access as motivation to arrive early is a hack worth stealing.
