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International travellers from Hyderabad may soon have an additional airline option with Turkish Airlines keen to connect the city with Istanbul and onward destinations in Europe and North America.
A member of Star Alliance, the airline presently flies daily to Istanbul from New Delhi and Mumbai with a 70-75 per cent load factor but has ambitious expansion plans in India.
Speaking to a group of Indian journalists visiting the airline's headquarters in Istanbul at its invitation, Dr Temel Kotil, President and Chief Executive Officer, said “We are speaking to authorities in India to add more routes. When we get the permission, we will add Hyderabad first to our schedule since we see a lot of demand from there.”
The airline hopes to start flying out of Hyderabad from early 2012 subject to approvals.
Asked how many cities Turkish would like to add to its itinerary, Dr Kotil said that a minimum of five is necessary.
“We fly to nine cities in Germany, a much smaller country,” he said, hastening to add, “But it is not polite to ask for more destinations immediately.”
According to him, the ideal frequency would be twice daily from Delhi and Mumbai as it would improve quality of onward connections to Europe and North America.
Competitor, Emirates, flies to only 22 destinations in Europe compared to 74 by Turkish but flies to 10 destinations in India, Dr Kotil pointed out adding, “We'll be the best carrier to feed into Europe. All major European cities are just 3-4 hours flying time out of Istanbul.”
The strategy is to capture a large part of the East-West traffic especially from/to India that is now dominated by the likes of Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways and Lufthansa.
Turkish was awarded the “Best Airline in Europe 2011” by Skytrax, an agency that provides audit and service benchmarking programmes for the airline industry globally.
Asked if the airline was looking for strategic partners in India, Dr Kotil said: “We can work with anybody in India but we don't need a joint venture to do that.”
Turkish has a limited code-share arrangement with Air India for 10 economy class and two business class seats.
Turkish Airlines is the 17th largest in the world in fleet size and operates 169 aircraft to 180 destinations worldwide.
It posted a turnover of $300 million in 2010 and is owned 51 per cent by the government and 49 per cent by public shareholders.
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