Turkish Airlines is planning to commence flights to Australia in December 2023. Ahmet Bolat, Chairman, Turkish Airlines revealed the airline’s plans to commence Istanbul-Melbourne via Singapore route towards the end of the year.
Due to existing flights between the two destinations by other airlines, Turkish Airlines will not have fifth freedom right between Singapore and Melbourne and the airline plans to use Changi has a tech stop to refuel and replace the crew.
Turkish will rely on point-to-point traffic and transfer passengers with the point-to-point passenger traffic totalling 26,000 passengers in 2019, while Melbourne-Türkiye had about 60,000.
The airline plans to add a thrice weekly flight deploying its B787-9s.
As per the bilateral air service agreements (ASAs) between Türkiye and Australia, Turkish can operate a maximum of four weekly flights, to any airport in Australia.
“We wish Melbourne to become a daily and presumably non-stop service aided with new generation aircraft. I also wish to launch a daily non-stop between Istanbul and Sydney within five years. Brisbane and Perth are also future possibilities,” Bolat added. "Even now, I can fly to Perth with [our] current aircraft, but during [certain periods], depending on the season and strong headwinds, it is not possible to operate [the route] nonstop.”