In an effort to assist operators and agents looking to book flights, leisure airline SunExpress has nearly increased its capacity from the UK to Turkey this summer.
Although the airline has been operating between Germany and Turkey for almost 30 years, it only began operating in the UK in the summer of 2022. It is jointly owned by Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa. But this summer, it increased the number of weekly flights from the UK to 136, up from 74 last year, raising the total number of seats by 87% to 1.32 million.
40% of the 700,000 passengers from the UK that SunExpress carried each year were made through travel agencies. The airline can be booked using GDS; however the majority of the remaining capacity is sold directly for seats only.
The airline has increased the number of airports in the UK that it services. Following its 2022 start from Birmingham, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Luton, and Manchester, it expanded this year to include Leeds Bradford, Stansted, and Bristol and Newcastle for the summer of 2023. Eighty flights to Antalya, forty to Dalaman, fifteen to Izmir, and one each to Adana and Gaziantep are available each week.
SunExpress CEO Max Kownatzki stated that the company’s tour operator division “has grown” and clarified, saying, “We do no individual deals [with operators], but if you buy more seats, you get a bigger discount.”
“We consider ourselves a value carrier, not low cost,” he said in an interview with Travel Weekly, adding that “the combination of Turkish hospitality with German thinking has made the company successful.”
This summer, SunExpress plans to fly 77 planes, ten more than it did the previous year when it
transported 12.6 million passengers over its network. This year, the company anticipates carrying 15 million passengers. By 2028, Kownatzki intends to fly 100 aircraft, and by 2035, 150.
Even though Turkish Airlines owns 50% of SunExpress, 90% of its revenue comes from the EU, with 85% coming from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The airline only has Boeing aircraft in service, although Kownatzki played down safety worries in the wake of a January Boeing 737 Max-9 door plug blowout that occurred in midair. The Max-9 is not run by SunExpress. However, in the wake of the tragedy, Boeing aircraft deliveries have been postponed.
“Any delay to deliveries before summer would affect us badly,” Kownatzki conceded, adding, “But we’ve secured all the aircraft we need for this year.”
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