Has anyone made three flights in one day?

Never tried! That would stress me out probably. You might see instead of going all the way to Istanbul if you could instead go Antalya - Izmir - Athens - Santorini. Izmir is a less giant airport than IST and has plenty of inter-Europe flights.

I have an unwritten rule: no more than two transports per day, but that's me. LOL. Good luck!

From what I see, it is either a 9 hour itinerary getting you to Santorini after midnight, or an 8 hour itinerary overnight getting you there at 6:30 am, both combo of Turkish and Aegean. Doable, but up to you.

Closest I’ve come was eight years ago: Nice to Paris, then Paris to Reykjavik, then Reykjavik to Denver. Those were three take-offs in Europe, and the first leg was relatively short, but at least I was flying westward, so jet lag wasn’t as bad.

That was back when Reykjavik to Denver was cheap, which is no longer the case.

I fly out of a regional airport in the US Midwest, so it would not be unusual for me to need three, even four, flights to get to far flung places in Europe, I know, not the same though.

The main difference is that the flights I take are usually all booked with the same airline or partnership, if you could do that, then go for it. But I imagine no single carrier or partnership flies those routes in both Turkey and Greece. Each connection carries risk, so add up flight times, appropriate buffers for connections, and see if you can get all that in a day. Schedules may work against you, but at least the Athens to Santorini leg usually has lots of options.

Yes, done this a number of times in the last few years without any issues. In April flew Tunis-Frankfurt-London-Denver. Also a few years ago flew Tallinn-Warsaw-Vienna-Pristina and last summer flew Cali-Panama City-Sao Paulo-Cuaiba also without issues.

Doing this within Europe should be easier given the shorter distances as compared to Africa or S America

Like paul, I live in iowa. So when I flew to Hawaii it was three legs,

Depending on the day of travel Lufthansa has a single ticket, 1 change routing from AYT-JTR , via Zurich

8.5 hrs from Antalya to Santorini ( 1135 AM to 805 PM)

3 flights is not the only option.

My first thought, even before reading the other responses was.....only on one ticket. If this was separate tickets I'd split it up into two days.

Thanks for the responses. We may just have to overnight in Istanbul to cut a flight out.

Oh the luxuries of time you can take in full retirement!

I'm breaking up my trip out of Istanbul in a couple of weeks just to avoid a 6am flight with its 3am wakeup call. Too bad I didn't do that for this week's flight!

Not my favorite, but three legs wasnt unusual to get to Europe when I lived in the US.

The last time I did it was going to Australia .... Budapest to Istanbut to Kuala Lumpur to Sydney. Only missed one connection on that trip. :-)

I once did 3 flights in 4 hours :-)

Sometimes you cannot get around it. Just make sure you book everything on one ticket, so that the airline must take care of you if things go wrong.

I just plugged in AYT to JTR (Antalya - Santorini) on Turkish Airlines. It would be one ticket. I randomly chose Monday Sept 16. It looks very doable. The price is TRY 20,000 per person. Leaves at 9.30 am and has enough layover time in IST and ATH. Go for it.

Due to a last minute rerouting ... we once had 5 flights! We flew Denver to Newark to Copenhagen to Munich to Athens to Mytilene (Lesvos). All on one ticket until we arrived in Athens. We left Denver at 10:12 am, arrived Mytilene 7:50 pm the next day. And then took a one-hour taxi across the island to our first stop. We were younger then.

If I am flying to California and back to Frankfurt, I do.
Using Iceland Air. Fly to Iceland from Frankfurt. Fly to Seattle. Fly to Sacramento. Reverse to come home. It looks like a lot, but is easier on my system than sitting in a plane for 11 hours flying to San Francisco, then a 3-4 hour layover to fly to Sacramento. The flight from Seattle to Iceland is nice and short, right around 6-7 hours and that is a plus for me.

I wouldn't love it. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

I'd suggest considering stops along the way to break up the flights and, more importantly, reduce the chance of a delayed or cancelled flight spoiling all your plans.

One of my travel rules: never be in a hurry. When you're scrambling or in a panic, you tend to make dumb mistakes (speaking from experience). Better to allow yourself time to get where you're going in a relaxed manner.

... at least I was flying westward, so jet lag wasn’t as bad.

That's interesting, because jet lag striked me worse when I am heading west. I usually don't get much jet lag heading eastward. I'm tired but that's because I can't sleep on planes, and once I got that first night's sleep, I'm energized and ready to go. Which usually works out well for my travels.

But coming back is another story. I am pretty much out of it for about 3 days, so I never schedule anything at home during that time.

We call it the "longest day". Flew ATL to JFK, JFK to Athens, and Athens to Santorini. Everything went according to plan, but it was one LONG day........I hate even making one change now.

Four legs on a miles ticket. We were young and poor. The call center gal worked her tail off putting this together: Indianapolis-Cincinnati—JFK-Dublin—Paris. Coming back we had volcano ash delay, storm in Cincinnati, no luggage showed up, so my husband stopped at CVS so I could buy a toothbrush. We had been in Paris for 7 months; the two huge bags and the small one were delivered the next day.

There are people on Flyertalk who do this sort of thing on purpose, mileage runs to hit a favored airline status or the like