Lie-flat seats and chilled champagne: Testing NYC Mayor Eric Adams' upgrade life

By Sarah Lyall

Istanbul: Life is grand in the Bentley Suite at the St. Regis Istanbul, with its marble floors and walk-in closet, its 24-hour butler service, and its views stretching all the way to the blue waters of the Bosporus.

The light sculpture suspended above the vast bed, where New York Mayor Eric Adams slept in 2017, is said to evoke the undulations of the Nürburgring racetrack in Germany.

The complimentary chocolate-covered strawberries on the coffee table are dusted with crushed pistachios and nestled on a bed of delicately crumbled cookies. The curved leather sofa has two built-in Champagne coolers that light up and open at the press of a button.

If you were to think about New York City (but why would you?) while reclining on your private balcony and gazing at the Gucci store across the street, you might be struck by the notion that the suite is roughly three times the size of your first apartment.

The Bentley, whose spectacular leather, chrome and lacquer decor was designed in concert with the luxury car manufacturer and inspired by the interior of a Bentley Continental GT, usually costs about $2,500 a night. Adams is said to have paid just $300. The rest of his tab was picked up by the hotel.

Last week, the mayor was accused in a federal indictment of corruptly accepting more than $100,000 in illegal gifts, including expensive airline seats and stays in hotels, in exchange for using his political influence to help Turkey. He pleaded not guilty to five felony counts Friday.

In the 57-page indictment, federal prosecutors portrayed Adams as a man who, after enjoying a few travel-related upgrades early in his political career, developed a hunger for and expectation of luxury travel that grew increasingly feverish and detail-oriented over the years.

Doling out upgrades is not unusual in the travel industry, where special perks are seen as a strategic way to curry favor with influential people. What stands out, according to the indictment, is the ardor of Adams' efforts to capitalize on his Turkish connections in order to travel in style, not only when he visited Turkey but also when he insisted on using its national airline to travel to places such as Ghana, China and India. Also notable is the blatant nature of the political favors that the mayor is charged with bestowing in return.

This weekend, a photographer for The New York Times, Clark Hodgin, and I retraced one of Adams' trips to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, long the mayor's carrier of choice.

We, too, enjoyed not thinking about our wearisome responsibilities back home and not having to use our own money while on this rarefied assignment. I also got to spend a night in the Bentley Suite.

The Times paid $9,236.90 for my round-trip ticket, tax included, and the benefits began not in the air, but in the (small, in the scheme of things) Turkish Airlines lounge in Terminal 1 at Kennedy International Airport. On Friday, it was offering typical lounge fare: a breakfast buffet of eggs and other hot entrees, as well as platters of cheese, charcuterie and tiny cakes.

None of the other customers seemed interested in discussing Adams and what he may or may not have done, perhaps because it was only 5:30 a.m. Still, the mayor's presence seemed to shimmer invisibly in the air.

For one thing, his enormous image could be seen looming from the TV screen, illustrating a report on CBS about his legal woes and their connections to Turkish Airlines. Also, in a strange turn of events, the lounge's Wi-Fi password turned out to be TKNYCADAMS.

That was merely an odd coincidence, according to the attendant at the front desk, who said that the lounge was operated by a company called Adams International and that its proprietor was a man named John Adams.

Flying business class on Turkish Airlines was a lovely experience, as flying business class always is. My joy at being allotted a seat in this happy area for the 10-hour flight was enhanced by my feelings of schadenfreude-infused sympathy for Clark.

Though he was on the same flight, he had bought his ticket too late and thus was stuck back in economy -- the exact place Adams had not wanted to be. (Clark's ticket cost the Times $2,289.90.) I felt sorry for him, wedged into his cramped seat with no one catering to his every whim, but not sorry enough to offer to switch places.

Up front, it was far too easy to get used to it all. The way the attendants made up our seats with special bedding, so we would be spared the burden of having to make direct contact with the actual seat fabric. The way the seats then stretched out into fully flat beds. The way dinner was preceded by a trolley full of appetizers -- an eggplant mélange, hummus, boiled shrimp and falafel, among other things -- mixed and matched at our seats by an attendant wearing a chef's toque and apron.

The snack bar set up in the front of the cabin was replenished throughout the flight. Battery-operated candles were lovingly placed on our trays in tiny paper bags printed with the words "candlelight dinner high above the clouds." The man sitting next to me was served two whiskeys before breakfast even arrived.

Let us stipulate that while all of this was pretty great, the high-end travel the mayor is said to have improperly accepted wasn't at the highest level possible. He didn't fly first class, for instance (possibly because Turkish Airlines doesn't have one).

Meanwhile, while the airline's business class took the top award for its food service in the 2024 Skytrax World Airlines Awards rankings of airlines' business classes, it came just 10th in overall quality.

And while the 1,345-square foot Bentley Suite is considered one of the most luxe accommodations at the St. Regis, it's not as luxe as the Presidential Suite, which has two bedrooms, not one. Nor is the hotel arguably the grandest in Istanbul.

Adams is said to have planned to stay in one of the city's two Four Seasons properties for a nominal fee on another trip in 2021 that would also have included "a yacht tour, a three-day stay at a luxury beach resort, and a car and driver," according to the indictment. (Alas, he canceled the trip at the last minute.)

Adams has not been said to have accepted free rides on anyone's private jet (hello, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) or convicted of amassing solid gold bars, cash and a luxury Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible in a bribery scheme benefiting Egypt, as recently happened to Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

Yet it's hard not to read the story of Adams and his trips as a cautionary tale about the perils of accepting free luxury anything, especially if you're a politician obliged to fill out pesky financial disclosure forms. It may indeed be better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but not when it comes to travel.

Once you've been in the front of a plane or stayed in one of the best rooms at a five-star hotel, it's disproportionately painful to be sent back to economy or forced to return once again to a Studio Suite at the Residence Inn.

Cenk Öcal, who as general manager of Turkish Airlines in New York was said in the indictment to have served as the point person for Adams' numerous seat-upgrade requests, seems to have understood this all too well, dangling business-class seats in front of the mayor as both carrot and stick. After Adams was elected mayor, Öcal began angling for a spot on his transition committee.

"It would suit me well to be lead Or Senior Advisor," Öcal wrote in a text to an Adams staffer, according to the indictment.

"Lead Plz :)," he later texted, and then added -- deploying perhaps the most horrifying generic threat imaginable to someone terrified of being relegated to the back of the plane -- "Otherwise seat number 52 is empty."