Turkish Delight for China Southern

China Southern Airlines is to launch a new flight to Istanbul, its first service to Turkey. The Asian carrier is to offer a three times weekly Beijing – Urumqi – Istanbul Ataturk link from September 2. It will use a Boeing 757-200 on the route and will compete with Hainan Airlines on the Urumqi – Istanbul sector; the latter is due to inaugurate a twice weekly link that originates in Shanghai on July 11.

China Southern currently offers flights to two other European destinations outside of the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States markets, with links to Amsterdam from Beijing and Guangzhou and Paris CDG from Guangzhou.

An estimated 198,000 O&D passengers travelled between Turkey and China in the past year, up 13.3 per cent on the previous 12 month period. Turkish Airlines (THY) currently dominates this market with a 79.8 per cent share of the market.

Schedule:

CZ679 PEK1650 – 2050URC2215 – 0020+1IST 752 257
CZ680 IST0135 – 1250URC1420 – 1750PEK 752 136