Turkish Airlines Expands in Germany

Turkish Airlines (THY) is to introduce flights to two additional destinations in Germany this summer, increasing its network in the country to eleven cities. The airline will introduce a four times weekly route between Istanbul and Bremen from April 26, 2012, increasing to a daily operation from May 1, 2012. A four times weekly link to Leipzig will follow from May 28, 2012 which will also increase to a daily schedule with effect from June 25, 2012. Both routes are currently served by airberlin

This month THY is offering 155 weekly flights on its nine routes between Turkey and Germany positioning itself as by far the largest carrier in the market. It currently has at least a daily service on each of these routes with a three times daily offering or more to Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. THY currently offers over 25,000 seats a week into Germany from its home market; 32.4 per cent of the total available capacity this month. In the past year an estimated 7.39 million O&D passengers flew between Germany and Turkey, up 26.5 per cent on 2010.

In the table below we look in greater detail at the capacity between Germany and Turkey over the past five years and how THY is facing greater competition from its local rivals in this expanding market. THY’s strategy is to develop as a major network carrier offering regular connections from Istanbul across multiple markets. In Germany it has been the number one carrier in terms of capacity for the past five years, although its share of available seats has fallen by just under a third from 35.4 per cent to 25.1 per cent. In fact, last year SunExpress almost overtook the carrier as the largest operator in the market, due to its own notable expansion in partnership with Lufthansa.