CAPA Center for Aviation
January 30, 2012

Turkish Airlines’ bullish African expansion plans will see the carrier launch service to several destinations in 2012 and upgrade many existing routes to twice daily. The carrier’s focus for 2012 is on expanding in emerging markets, primarily Africa, as further network expansion in the US is on hold and plans for launching service to Australia will likely not materialise until at least 2013.

Turkish currently operates 18 destinations in Africa, including Misrata in Libya which was launched in Dec-2011. Turkish CEO Temel Kotil told CAPA in Dec-2011 that the carrier plans to launch in 2012 Abuja and Kano in Nigeria; Kigali in Rwanda; Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire; and Mogadishu in Somalia.

The carrier has since also announced plans to launch in 2012 Kinshasa in The Democratic Republic of the Congo, which could give Turkish an African network of 24 destinations by the end of this year.

The dramatic expansion will make Turkish the largest international carrier in Africa in terms of total number of destinations. The African expansion is partially made possible by the carrier’s new fleet of Boeing 737-900ERs, which will be used to launch new routes and to increase frequency on existing routes that are currently served with widebody aircraft. Turkish already operates two Boeing 737-900ERs, which were delivered in 4Q2011 and are now used to serve three African destinations: Dar es Saalam, Accra and Lagos.

The aim of switching to narrowbodies on some medium-haul African routes is to allow Turkish to offer more frequencies to African destinations and to free up widebodies for expansion in other regions. Mr Kotil says Turkish Airlines does not have any widebody deliveries scheduled for 2012. While some long-haul expansion will be pursued using the widebody aircraft freed up from African routes as eight additional Boeing 737-900ERs are delivered, the rate of long-haul expansion for Turkish in 2012 will not be nearly as rapid as previous years.

Source: CAPA

Copyright © 2012 WardheerNews.com