Turkish Airlines plans to increase its frequencies to a number of cities in the former Yugoslavia this summer as it prepares to fully move to its new hub in Istanbul on March 3. Notably, Turkish Airlines will maintain the greatest number of flights within the former Yugoslavia to Sarajevo this summer with three daily services planned from the very start of the 2019 summer season. The airline will maintain a total of 21 weekly flights from Istanbul. Furthermore, it will run over 220 regular charter flights from Antalya to the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from late May until mid-September. Services will be maintained by its subsidiary AnadoluJet. Turkish is also considering introducing a second destination in the country, to Mostar, but will do so only if it manages to negotiate subsidies with local authorities, similar to the ones enjoyed by Croatia Airlines and Eurowings, which maintain flights to the city.
In Croatia, Turkish Airlines will operate double daily flights to Dubrovnik, up from eleven per week last summer. The additional frequencies will be launched at the end of June. The carrier handled a total of 70.339 passengers from Croatia's third busiest airport in 2018, up 27.1% on the year before. It accounted for 2.2% of all passengers and was Dubrovnik's sixth busiest. Turkish recently noted, "Our plan is to launch another route to Croatia so we can better connect the country to the world and bring even more tourists". In cooperation with the Croatian National Tourist Board, Turkish Airlines is currently promoting Zagreb and Dubrovnik across Asia.
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| Turkish Airlines Zagreb ad in Singapore metro |
The Turkish carrier will also grow its operations to Podgorica by adding an additional flight to the Montenegrin capital for a total of fourteen per week. "Turkish Airlines currently flies to every capital city in the region such as Belgrade, Sarajevo, Podgorica and Ljubljana. Before we decide on introducing a new route or increasing frequencies within our destination network, our team of experts conducts a number of studies focusing on various aspects and taking into account the performance of our existing destinations, which also plays a deciding role in our network expansion. In addition, it is important to take note of various changes on the market and have initiative", the company's Country Manager for Croatia, Ugur Cantimur, said recently.
Despite attempts to increase frequencies and capacity to Belgrade, Turkish Airlines will continue to operate doubly daily flights between its hub and the Serbian capital this summer. In 2018, the Serbian Civil Aviation Directorate rejected the carrier's application to operate one of its two daily services with a wide-body Airbus A330-200 aircraft throughout the entire summer season and later rejected the its request to add an additional four weekly flights between Istanbul and Belgrade as of September 2018.
Comments
Regarding prices, they are far from cheap and often they are more expensive than Aeroflot, Qatar and Etihad. Actually, rarely you will find that they are providing the best rate among those.
The answer is obvious - they are an instrument of Turkish govt policy and are funded/subsidised to levels not known.
As much as you think they are good, their unfair competition has forced so many airlines out of the game - which is why very few European carriers fly to Turkey today
all turkish airports have a decline currently (with the one exception Antalya bringing foreign tourists to cheap Turkey). The numbers of turkish tourists in ex-yu plummeted since September
Airport: Ataturk is a desaster, you cant even sit there, as there are too few seats.
And of course good goody Lufty - or the big US airlines for that matter - would never, ever force another airline out of the game. Everything they do, they do in the name greater competition and higher number of airlines in the market. And never in their history they used a single dime of taxpayer money to achieve that. Right?
Total delay of TK's migration from IST to ISL will be four months. If you take into account it will be the largest such event in the history of commercial flying I would say even a year of delays would be tolerable, let alone 4 months. There will be no room for major errors so they obviously need to have everything well in place before they move >300 aircraft and all operations to another airport - at once.
However, 3 weekly triangular route would make sense:
IST-SKP-INI-IST or
IST-BEG-INI-IST.
IST-BEG 22.00-22.40
BEG-IST 07.00-09.40
With a JU code this could be a real winner.
Do you remember how VAR and CND were "married" for many years?
Now they are separated.
It used to be IST-VAR-CND
So the same can be applied to INI.
SPU will never offer them only a lipa as incentives, discounts or however one wishes to call it.
No, povezati dvije nepostojece je vec nesto drugo
If you start googling a bit, you can see countless reports and websites about state subsidies for THY.
FRA-SAW-AYT
On the check-in in FRA they do not want to issue you boarding pass for SAW-AYT. They say you will get it on the gate. On the gate I asked for it and got the answer - you will get it in SAW. After I strongly demanded to get boarding pass for SAW-AYT they issued it to me.
In FRA they forgot stoller on the gate. In SAW they know nothing about the stroller. Finally in AYT we got inform that stroller will be delivered to our hotel. At least something.-
AYT-IST-FRA
Flight from Antalya was delayed due to weather conditions. We missed connection in Istanbul - last flight on 31.12.
Many people waiting in a queue demanding accommodation. They can't handle it as they do not have enough hotels available. With 2 small kids we somehow managed to get at least second class lounge access.
As the diapers were in our luggage we asked them to find our luggage in order we can at least keep the children clean. We had to wait in some TK office in IST 3-4 hours and finally they informed us that they can't locate our luggage. We got thrown out of the office.
Next day we finally managed to board the plane to FRA and after we landed we noticed that the luggage they could find night before was all wet as it was raining on previous night. Who knows where it was kept...
I had in my life more than 400 flights but such a terrible service I have never had before.
TK? Thanks, but no thanks.
Do you have any link for it?
I know a lot of people from Banja Luka traveling to Istanbul from Zagreb
The aircraft was in TIA for months but the airline never get off the ground and it returned to Turkey.
"IBNA’s Observation/Why did Air Albania vanish from the skies?"
https://www.balkaneu.com/ibnas-observationwhy-did-air-albania-vanish-from-the-skies/
There is absolutely nothing wrong in being supported by your state, provided that you spend that money wisely and grab something for your country and economy in that gladiator arena which is naively referred to as 'global market'. TK did a tremendous job for its country and is a shining example of how this game is played.
Seems TK has it for its failed investments in Balkan airlines.
Oh well, they try to keep Erdogan happy by agreeing to his political projects.
Source: Jacdec international airlines safety ranking 2018
TK's record is far from pristine but they never crashed an aircraft and killed everyone on board because the pilots put two children in their seats and switched the autopilot off. I bet Jacdec did not take that tiny detail into consideration.