Insight: the growth strategies of Turkish Airlines and Pegasus Airlines

When most of the 1.520 delegates for the IATA AGM

flew via Istanbul a week ago, they entered and departed Turkey via the two main gateways: the new Istanbul Airport or the older Istanbul Sabiha Gökcen. The former is the hub of Turkish Airlines, the latter that of subsidiary Anadolujet but notably that of Pegasus Airlines. As top management of both airline groups made clear during the week, aviation in Turkey is set for major growth in the coming years. But where is it coming from? Insight: the growth strategies of Turkish Airlines and Pegasus Airlines.

Mehmet Nane, the vice president of Pegasus, gave a clear answer to that: “The Turkish market is very big. We have incoming traffic, domestic traffic, and transit traffic. We are in Istanbul now: with a two-hour flight to the East, you reach our eastern cities. If you go West, you go to Vienna, to Europe. Turkey is a big country, so the domestic demand is there, international demand is there.”