What is Turkish Airlines' position today?
Ömer Faruk Sönmez - We may not know it enough, but Turkish Airlines is the airline that offers the most destinations in the world today. We offer 349 destinations in 130 countries with our fleet of over 460 aircraft. This means we cover 90% of the world's population. Only on the FranceWe offer 101 frequencies a week to 7 cities.
What's new on the network for the 2024/2025 winter season?
Ömer Faruk Sönmez - The most important new feature is certainly theopening of Sydney on 4 December 2024. The flight will be made 4 times a week via Kuala Lumpur. With the delivery of the Airbus A350-1000 ultra-long-range aircraft around 2026, we will be able to offer non-stop flights. On 18 December 2024, we will also be inaugurating four weekly flights from Istanbul to Santiago de Chilewith a stopover in Sao Paulo. Last June, we also inaugurated a new route to the United States with service to Denver.
Asia remains one of the continents where we are continuing to expand strongly. We have added frequencies to Bali, Bangkok, the Maldives and Phuket for the winter season. And we're looking at new services to Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. But I can't give any dates at the moment. We remain very dependent on the delivery of new aircraft according to schedule...
Are you also considering new destinations in France?
Ömer Faruk Sönmez - We have already been studying our eventual arrival in Nantes. We'd love to serve this city, but unfortunately we've used up the total number of flights allocated to us for the time being. We would have to reduce our frequencies to other French destinations. Which seems difficult...
What are Turkish Airlines' long-term objectives?
Ömer Faruk Sönmez - They are very ambitious. We want to go from 83.4 million passengers last year to 170 million by 2033. This would represent an average annual increase of almost 8%. As for our fleet, itthe number of aircraft would rise from 464 to over 800 in the same period…
Turkish Airlines still doesn't have an Economy Premium class. Are you considering such a product?
Ömer Faruk Sönmez - For the time being, we have no plans to create a Premium Economy class. On the other hand, we are starting to roll out our new long-haul business product, the Crystal Business Class. The seat design was created by our own subsidiary and the product will appear on all our aircraft as deliveries and reconfigurations take place.
Finally, we will be offering a fast, universal wi-fi connection to all our passengers. This service is currently available to our Elite and Star Alliance Gold passengers. Other passengers currently have access to a free messaging service. But this will change in 2025.
