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Turkish turns focus on China and India
July 6th 2018
Turkish Airlines has its sights firmly set on the opening of Istanbul New Airport on October 29. Read More » The Star Alliance carrier has been unable to grow as fast as it would have liked in the past three years due to crippling capacity constraints at the current Ataturk International Airport. The situation forced the carrier to defer aircraft deliveries.
Turkish CEO, Bilal Eksi, has identified China and India as the carrier’s most important growth markets. Speaking to Business Travel News, Eksi said: “Each day, our marketing people are looking for new destinations. Of course, some of them are in Europe or Africa, but our main market is India, the second is China and the third is Canada,” he said.
Turkish is hoping to recruit more Chinese and Indian partners before it mounts new flights. “We hope we can declare some very good cooperation with some Indian carriers, and we are in negotiations with the Chinese airlines. Also, we are looking for traffic rights to India, China and Canada and we hope that we will get more traffic rights,” said Eksi.
Turkish has daily traffic rights to Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai and also serves Taipei daily and Hong Kong six times a week. In India, it flies daily to Delhi and Mumbai.
It has a long-haul fleet of 33 B777-300ERs and 62 A330s and has placed orders for 25 A350-900s with five options and 25 B787-9s also with five options.
