Travel
Monday, May 12, 2014
Turkish Airlines flies to Zanzibar
DESTINATION: The airline has a comperative advantage and will increase its flight frequency to seven.
ARUSHA, Tanzania - After enjoying a seamless, consistent business operation between Istanbul-Dar es Salaam and Kilimanjaro routes, Turkish Airlines’ management are looking forward to open an additional route to Zanzibar.
The airline started its operations in Tanzania in 2010 when the only route by then was Istanbul-Dar es Salaam before introducing the Kilimanjaro-Istanbul in December last year.
Abdulkadir Atay, the airline’s regional commercial manager to Tanzania based in Arusha said the business trend has been working right in favour of the airline to the extent that there is a need to increase Istanbul-Dar flights to seven.
He said the Turkish airlines flights are always full because over 85 percent of the passengers in the Dar-Istanbul route are those in transit towards other destination across Europe, Asia, Far East, North and South America and elsewhere, he said.
Atay confirmed that flight frequencies from Dar es Salaam to Istanbul will be increased to seven with effect from July to cope with the passenger traffic intensity between the two destinations.
He said the passenger intensity between Dar es Salaam and Istanbul has been growing and that his airline does not actually see the need to introduce measures in curbing seasonality.
He said: “We are in the middle of the low season, but our flights are fully booked with bookings being wait-listed.”
The airline’s vice-president for marketing and sales, Mevlu Kayar, confirmed last week saying business has been booming. In his views therefore an additional flight to Zanzibar was necessary to meet the huge demand by passengers.
Obviously conscious of other international airlines currently in operation of the Zanzibar route from Europe, Kayar is confident that the East Africa’s precious Island destination will be successful in terms of passenger flights.
Turkish Airlines flies ten times a week with the Istanbul-Dar frequencies hitting six times and the balance for the Kilimanjaro route.
Currently Turkish Airlines is using two-class configuration Boeing 737-900 for the Dar es Salaam–Istanbul route with the passenger capacity of 170 and 16 of those in the business class.
The seven-hour one-take-off, one-landing flights always leave the Julius Nyerere International Airport at 3:00am and lands in Istanbul before noon to ease connection to most of its passengers flying outside Turkey.
Reacting to complaints over the flight timings for those passengers flying from Dar es Salaam and KIA, Atay said there is no option for the moment as it is the best for the bulk of them who use Istanbul as their connection base to their desired destinations.
Return flights from Istanbul to Dar es Salaam are convenient as Turkish Airlines take off at 1900 hours and the only discomfort is in Dar es Salaam as the flight lands early in the morning.
By Elisha Mayallah, Monday, May 12th, 2014