Expansion Drive
Turkey is an emerging economic powerhouse and Istanbul’s secondary airport, Sabiha Gökçen, is seizing the chance to expand its network, writes Louise Driscoll.
Open a UK travel and tourism publication and chances are that it will feature Turkey in some shape or form. This is because last year the country knocked Spain off the top spot for being Britain’s number one package holiday destination and the country is proving a hit with a range of tourists, from families to backpackers and everything in between.
It’s not only Turkey’s tourism industry that is riding high – the country’s economy proved fairly resilient during the global slowdown thanks to the strenght of its agriculture, manufacturing and construction sectors. This shows, with the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) revealing in June that the country’s economy expanded at a rate of 11.7% in the first quarter of 2010 on an annual basis.
As a result, Turkey is enjoying significant year-on-year passenger growth with three million total visitors in the first quarter of this year. Those figures translate to an 11.9% rise on the same period last year, according to the Turkish Office of Culture & Tourism.
Geographically, Istanbul is the meeting place between Europe and Asia with the Bosporus Strait physically splitting the city – a phenomenon that has helped to shape the city’s two international airports.
Atatürk (IST) is owned by TAV Airports Holding and is located on the European side of the city. It is the country’s major gateway and the hub for Star Alliance member Turkish Airlines, handling just under 30mppa in 2009, according to the airport operator.
Over on the Asian side is Sabiha Gökçen International (SAW), which is operated by a consortium of Turkey’s Limak Holdings, India’s GMR Group and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad. It is the city’s secondary gateway and is currently benefiting from the domestic low-cost travel and tourism boom by registering dramatic domestic growth from its Turkish low-cost carriers SunExpress, Pegasus Airlines and AnadoluJet, as well as Condor, easyJet and Germanwings.
Sabiha Gökçen’s chief commercial officer Server Aydin, points out that demand from the airport’s catchment area of 18 million people is translating into strong domestic growth. Looking at the airport’s growth rate, in the first half of 2010, just under 3.5 million domestic passengers passed through the terminal. During the same period last year, the figures were closer to 1.8 million.
As of June 2010, the airport’s network spans 66 international and 24 domestic destinations serviced by 15 scheduled airlines, according to Flightbase (September 14-20, 2010)
In order to support this growth, which has seen the gateway doubling its point-to-point network in two years, the airport recently constructed a brand new terminal with a 25 mppa capacity.
The €450 million facility opened in October last year and commercial flights followed one month later with Turkish Airlines starting international services to new European destinations, including Stuttgart and Cologne. Today these are the airport’s leading two international destinations on the basis of seat capacity.
While the terminal has certainly enhanced the airport’s offering, growth in passenger and aircraft numbers is putting pressure on the other existing infrastructure. As a result, a new runway is in the planning stages and Aydin expects plans to be finalised by the end of this year.
“The new runway will double airside capacity to 80 aircraft movements an hour,” he comments.
Leading LCCs
The low-cost sector in particular is thriving at Sabiha Gökçen, thanks to the domestic air travel really taking off and tourists flocking to Istanbul from Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland – the airport’s largest tourist markets, says Aydin.
Currently, the leading low-cost operator at the airport domestically and internationally is Pegasus Airlines. This is followed by SunExpress, which increased frequencies from Turkey to Vienna this summer. The airline’s managing director, Paul Schwaiger, says this is because Turkey is the number one tourist destination for Austrian tourists.
Meanwhile, there are clear indications that Pegasus’ network will continue to grow beyond its current 70 destinations, with the carrier having plans to phase in 31 new B737-800s by 2015. Pegasus will begin services from Sabiha Gökçen to Sofia in September. Currently, the only flights between Istanbul and Sofia are operated by Turkish Airlines at Atatürk Airport.
Aydin believes that the low-cost operator has had a major role to play in the airport’s expanding network and will continue to do so in the future. “Pegasus accounts for 45% of our total traffic. While we are a hybrid airport, we recognize that the future for growth lies wiht the low-cost model, as it has done by driving growth all over the world.”
Established in 1990 as a charter airline in partnership with Aer Lingus, Pegasus was sold to private Turkish Investors in 2005 and was rebourn as a low-cost carrier later that same year. It has expanded rapidly and today flies to 18 domestic and 23 international destinations from Turkey, says Guliz Ozturk, the airline’s senior vice president, commercial. These are served with Pegasus’ fleet of 32 aircraft. Five of these aircraft are operated by sister airline Izair. From July 30, daily operations will be added to Rome Fiumicino and Milan-Bergamo.
Guliz Ozturk, Pegasus’ senior vice president of commercial, looks back at its growth: “In 2005, our annual traffic wasn’t even 200,000 passengers. Last year, we carried 3,5 million and this year we expect to handle over five million passengers. Our growth shows that the market is well-suited to LCC’s.”
Other carriers have taken note of Pegasus’ rapid development at Istanbul ‘s second gateway, with Turkish Airlines switching its daily London Stansted operations from Atatürk to Sabiha Gökçen last November.
Most recently, Turkish Airlines transfered its fligts at Sabiha Gökçen to its low-cost subsidiary, AnadoluJet and it has taken over routes to Nicosia, Amsterdam, London Stansted, Moscow Sheremetyovo, Izmir-Adnan Menderes, Antalya and Adana. The airline currently flies from Sabiha Gökçen to three international markets – Stockholm Arlanda, Copenhagen and Nahcivan in Azerbaijan and six domestic destinations – Ankara Esenboga, Trabzon, Erzurum, Dalaman, Konya and Bodrum-Milas.
In other developments, Sabiha Gökçen also recently initiated Turkey’s first scheduled turboprop flight, with a service to Tokat on May 7, with regional operator BoraJet. This milestone was achieved through a long-term partnership with Sabiha Gökçen’s commercial team and the airline. Aydin explains the importance of the service: “Turkey and indeed Istanbul, has needed services to small cities for a long time, to feed off, rather than compete with major carriers.”
He adds that the commercial team is committed to working closely with tourism authorities and airlines: “We attended 39 tourism trade shows and fairs last year in cities such as Berlin, Milan, Moscow, Kiev, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan,” says Aydin. “The aim is to increase awareness of Istanbul as a destination and only then do we sell the airport.”
Facilitating transfers
Sabiha Gökçen’s focus will remain on point-to-point traffic, leaving Atatürk as Turkey’s major international gateway but it will channel some efforts into improving connectivity for low-cost airlines, Aydin explains.
“Our point-to-point network makes up 90% of our operations and means that connectivity isn’t currently possible,” he says.
As such, the airport is currently developing an in-house software technology system to the tune of €2 million, which will enable low-cost airlines to interline schedules, passengers and bagage.
The system, which is due to be launched in February 2011, will allow the airport to increase its share of transit traffic as well as delivering its airlines with higher load factors due to their ability to sell more destinations, believes Aydin. “AirArabia, for example, could sell not only Istanbul as a route, but the whole of Europe from Istanbul.”
While improving reach into Europe is a priority for the airport, so is boosting links to Africa, says Aydin: “We had successful meetings with airlines at Routes Africa and are dedicating ourselves to gaining links to continental Africa next year – hopefully to Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya.”
Sabiha Gökçen hopes this proactive approach with airlines and tourism partners, will ensure its important position in Istanbul’s airport system and tourism industry now and well into the future.