Turkish Airlines - if you want to pay cheap, you will get cheap

We booked a flight to Porto Portugal via Instanbul with Turkish Airlines. Their fees were competitive we took a chance with them. Optimistically, and suppose a bit naive, I booked a car rental ahead of time at Porto airport as I was told that this was a cheaper option. Just before we had to fly, we were told by Turkish Airlines that the flight had to divert to Durban to fuel up which is highly irregular. This diversion would cause us to lose our connecting flight to Porto so in desperation, we got them to book us another flight later but this time to Lisbon. We ended up flying to Lisbon but then I lost the rental car at Porto and had to, at great expense, hire another car at Lisbon and use up time and petrol to drive from Lisbon to Porto. To compound problems, the first car rental company were not prepared to refund us the car rental fee.

In addition, when we were to fly back to Johannesburg from Instanbul, we had to literally travel at the dead of night and the departure gate was right at the end of the airport.

I suppose the lesson is you get what you pay. Turkish Airlines was a latecomer to the travel hub business so their South African flights are not in premium locations at airports and they get the short end of stick compared to more established airlines. So, I recommend that you avoid Turkish Airlines as the cheaper costs actually are at risk and you could end up paying more overall for your travel.