In 2012, Turkish Airlines witnessed 12 per cent growth in number of passengers and 20 percent growth in revenue from India over 2011. “Our load factor was 85 per cent in 2012 and we want to continue with similar momentum this year too. We are in talks with the departments to add more destinations and are awaiting their approval, but we would definitely like to increase the routes here and tap the great potential India as a diverse and budding country offers. We want to fly eight destinations in India – Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai. Currently, we have 14 flights weekly flights, dailies from Delhi and Mumbai. Our wish is to increase weekly frequency from India to 70. We want to have double dailies from these cities and dailies from the remaining six destinations,” Adnan Aykac, General Manager, Turkish Airlines, told T3.
According to him, the carrier gets a mix of traffic from India. “However, leisure and business travel segments are quite important for us. Leisure from India is increasing consistently,” he said and added that only 20 per cent of Indian travelers carried by Turkish Airlines visited Turkey in 2012. “This year, we expect this to touch 25 per cent and the remaining 75 per cent of Indian traffic go beyond Istanbul as Turkish is one of the biggest network carrier in the world,” he revealed.
The reason for healthy load factor is due to the fact that Turkish offers tailor-made solutions to every segment of travellers. “We offer lucrative offers to corporate, student and worker segment. We have designed these packages that cater to different geographical regions of India also,” he said. Talking about the latest development in Turkey, Aykac added that Turkey is as safe as any other destinations in the world.
“Stakeholders of Turkish tourism industry are in contact with Indian travel trade explaining them that there is nothing to worry. We are trying to invite more and more Indian travellers to come and visit Turkey,” he said.
Commenting on the challenges in India, he said that Indian market dynamics is totally different in terms of customer’s behavior. Moreover, the higher airport fees, mainly at Delhi and Mumbai, are also not very conducive for foreign carriers. “India has been very potential but challenging market for us. Expanding and adding more routes in India has been the major challenge for us. We are still waiting for more bilateral rights,” he added.
Currently, no Indian airline flies to Turkey. However, Aykac does not see this as a problem for getting more flying rights. “Indian carriers can start flights to Turkey whenever they want. This will be a commercial decision. There are many places whose airlines fly to India without an Indian carrier going there like Amsterdam, from where KLM flies without any Indian carrier going to Holland,” he said.
