To fly daily from Dar
Turkish Airlines
The airline’s vice-president for marketing and sales, Mevlu Kayar, confirming this in Istanbul last week said 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 has been confident that the East Africa’s precious Island destination will be successful in terms of passenger flights.
The Turkish Airlines’ official declined to mention the exact time when the new route to Zanzibar will be opened but insisted that there is no doubt over its introduction.
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.
Turkish Airlines flies ten times a week with Istanbul-Dar frequencies hitting six times and the balance for the Kilimanjaro route.
Abdulkadir Atay, the airline’s regional commercial manager to Tanzania based in Arusha said 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.
Atay confirmed that flight frequencies from Dar es Salaam to Istanbul will be increased to seven with effect from July to cope with passenger traffic intensity between the two destinations.
He said the passenger intensity between Dar es Salaam and Istanbul has been on a growing trend and that his airline does not actually see the need to introduce measures in curbing seasonality.
“Look here, we are in the middle of the low season but have a look at our flights, they are full and bookings are ‘overflowing,” said Atay.
However, the Turkish airlines flights are always full not because most of Tanzanians fly to Istanbul as their sole destination.
But 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.
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 3am and lands at Istanbul before noon to ease connection to most of its passengers flying outside Turkey.
Reacting on 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 highly convenient as Turkish Airlines take off at 1900 hours and the only discomfort is in Dar es Salaam as flight lands early in the morning.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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