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Turkish Airlines aims to stay ahead of competition

Turkish Airlines has been making headwinds in the aviation sector with its achievements in terms of passengers, destinations and its latest blitzkrieg involving the football stars Kobe and Messi. In an interview with Khaleej Times, Ayse Misirli Mirza, General Manager of Turkish Airlines in Dubai, talks about how the company managed to achieve so much with significant economies of scale. Excerpts:

Turkish Airline is celebrating its 80^th anniversary this year. How’s the journey so far?

As a Star Alliance member Turkish Airlines operates the fourth largest flight network in the world with a fleet of 233 aircraft, a milestone leap from the five airplanes operated in 1933 when it was established. The global carrier on its 80^th anniversary year has been voted once again as ‘Europe’s Best Airline’ for the third consecutive year at the 2013 Skytrax awards. The airline was also awarded ‘Best Business Class Catering’ and has received numerous passenger choice awards.

In recent years, Turkish Airlines has greatly expanded its place in the global aviation community by a series of large-scale aircraft orders, continual network expansion and the implementation of other significant investments designed to make Turkish Airlines a truly global brand. Led by Turkey’s strategic geographic location, we offer the best connection time for travellers from anywhere in the world, reaching more countries than any other airline with 243 destinations across 104 countries. This year, we also celebrate the significant milestone of 30 years of flying to the UAE, where we now operate 20 weekly flights and recently launched the award winning onboard ‘Flying Chef Service.’

Reaching out to 243 destinations with a total staff strength of almost half compared with other prominent players is a feat. How do you plan to stay ahead of competition?

Our main strategy is to use the sixth freedom hub model — using Istanbul as a domestic hub to connect flights between foreign destinations — owing to our location at the heart of Eurasia where we can combine both short and long haul. We are investing in a new fleet and with the opening of the third airport in Istanbul we will have further infrastructure support to power our growth. We have achieved significant economies of scale, which will continue to drive our growth. Our goal is to become the best airline in the world by 2023, the year that Turkey celebrates the centenary of our country’s formation.

What are the new plans or routes to commemorate the anniversary?

We have just unveiled our ‘Widen Your World’ campaign with our global brand ambassadors Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi, which is a significant statement as Turkish Airlines strives to continually expand its network. This year we added 20 new destinations and there are plans to sustain our momentum as one of the world’s fastest growing airlines.

In addition to Europe, Turkish Airlines is also expanding its network into Russia, Central Asia, Far East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and North and South America. We are focusing on the potential of emerging economies in Africa where we plan to add another 10 additional points.

Turkey’s population of 74 million and its larger land mass affords a huge domestic market which we will continue to grow from and our goal is to further strengthen passenger traffic across key cities such as Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir; to eventually fly to every airport in the country.

How much passenger traffic and cargo movement is there from the UAE?

In the last two years Turkish Airlines has witnessed a 36 per cent growth in passenger growth from the UAE, comparing January to September this year with the same period in 2012. This year, we have added two new weekly flights from Abu Dhabi to Istanbul, bringing the total to six flights per week, as well as the number of existing employees in the airline’s Abu Dhabi sales office being tripled. This year in Dubai we also opened our new sales office and a separate cargo office in Downtown Dubai. Our cargo operations in Dubai have also increased by 43 per cent from January to October compared to the same period in 2012.

The region is experiencing exponential growth across core sectors including travel, tourism and hospitality and with the UAE celebrating Dubai’s win to host Expo 2020 the Emirate is paving its way for further infrastructure development. This will undoubtedly have an impact on the inbound and outbound passenger traffic, and also on cargo movements in the region.

We have a number of campaigns specifically tailored for travellers from the UAE and wider Middle East with promotional flights to Istanbul, the increasingly popular holiday destination with less than four hours flight time and a growing cultural hotspot for enriching city breaks. Our latest ‘Winter in Turkey’ campaign offers exclusive fares from across the region to Istanbul for connections to winter leisure destinations in Turkey.