In Turkish Airlines' "great move" this year from its longtime base at Istanbul Ataturk Airport to the new Istanbul Airport, the carrier moved 47,000 tons of equipment and 337 planes within 33 hours. At the carrier's recent Corporate Club Conference in Istanbul, chairman Ilker Ayci referenced Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. "If you compare our big move, it was larger than that."
Ataturk is largely closed with the exception of some cargo and private aviation traffic, and the new airport that Turkish Airlines now calls home is the world's largest terminal under a single roof, boasting a capacity of 90 million passengers per year. Over the next several years, expansion and new runways will grow that potential capacity to 200 million passengers per year. Istanbul Airport chief planning officer Ismail Polat said that projected growth brought to mind another historical military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was quoted as saying Istanbul would be the capital if the world was a single country.
For Turkish Airlines, the airport unlocks growth potential. Turkish Airlines' network consists of 266 international destinations, including 12 gateway cities, and 50 domestic locations. The carrier plans to build that further with as many as 30 new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft set to join its fleet over the next four years.
By 2023, the carrier aims to have an annual 120 million passengers, compared with more than 75 million last year, which was an increase of 9.5 percent compared with 2017. About a third of those were transit passengers connecting in Istanbul. "We have already increased our total destinations and frequencies after moving to the new airport," according to Turkish Airlines SVP of corporate marketing and distribution channels Mert Dorman. "With the advent of new kinds of aircraft, we are currently utilizing lots of the advantages, such as better connection times. Also, with extra space provided to lounges [in the new airport,] we have the chance to provide more comfortable zones to our Corporate Club members."
The grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft has affected 24 of Turkish's aircraft, denting capacity, but even so, passenger growth has continued this year, Ayci said. As the carrier has grown, so has its focus on small and midsize enterprise accounts, Dorman said. "Earlier, most of the focus was on bigger clients who would bring a revenue that would be the sum of many SMEs," Dorman said. "However, after the technological improvements that have increased the productivity in terms of account management, each sector started focusing more on SMEs to create extra revenue."
The SME focus includes Turkish's Smart program, which offers corporate members discounts as high as 10 percent, as well as extra baggage allowances and membership in the Corporate Club corporate loyalty program. "Even though they are small in terms of the number of single company flights, it shows a different story when the whole segment is considered," Dorman said.
The airline also will focus on distribution next year, Dorman said. It plans to introduce to the market in the third quarter of 2020 a distribution channel that comples with Level 4 New Distribution Capability standards, he said.