Turkish Airlines' plans to launch services to Los Angeles and Washington Dulles have been put back to December, but the airline is still intending to open the links which will more than double capacity on US routes.
The Star Alliance carrier only serves two US gateways - New York JFK and Chicago O'Hare - but has been looking for several years at others. ATI reported last December that Turkish was seeking additional long-haul aircraft to enable the carrier to launch flights to Los Angeles in March 2010 and to Washington Dulles in April 2010.
Turkish chief executive Temel Kotil says the carrier will finally be ready to launch flights from Istanbul to both cities in December. The launch, he says, will be made possible by the delivery of new Boeing 777s.
"Washington and Los Angeles will be daily. We'll start in December because we are waiting for the aircraft," Kotil told ATI during a Star Alliance event in Sao Paulo.
Kotil explains the carrier is due to receive the first four aircraft from its 12-aircraft order for 777-300ERs over last four months of this year and all four of these will be used on US routes.
In addition to launching one daily flight on both the Los Angeles and Washington routes he says Turkish will use the new 777s to add a second daily flight from December on its Istanbul-New York JFK route. Turkish currently serves New York once per day with 777-300ERs and Chicago once per day with a mix of Airbus A330s and A340s, according to scheduling specialist Innovata.
Turkish only faces competition on the New York-Istanbul route, which is also served non-stop by Delta Air Lines. Currently there are no carriers operating non-stop services on the Los Angeles or Washington to Istanbul routes.
Turkish, which operates four 777-300ERs that are leased from India's Jet Airways, placed orders for 12 777-300ERs last year.
Kotil says Turkish was interested in starting deliveries of its new 777s earlier but Boeing was not able to offer slots before September 2010. "They couldn't deliver earlier. I need the aircraft right now," he says. "I wish I could take them earlier."
He says Turkish expects to receive its first new 777 in September and roughly one additional aircraft will be delivered every month until all 12 are received. Turkish plans to wait until December to use any of these aircraft on scheduled routes because the aircraft can initially be more profitably deployed on Hajj charters. Hajj this year falls in November.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
