Last year tour operator German Travel International (GTI) gained rights to start a charter airline that would be based in Düsseldorf and operate to a number of Turkish destinations. Turkey's capital, Antalya is marked to be its first route.
GTI began in 1994 in Düsseldorf, Germany with 100% Turkish capital and with its activities primarily focused on organising holidays to Turkish destinations. In its first year alone it sent 15,000 tourists to Turkey and is now one of the larger tour operators in Germany.
The new start up airline will serve a market that carries large volumes of leisure and VFR traffic. Nine carriers operate scheduled services between Germany and Turkey, with Turkish Airlines leading the pack with a 34% market share. This translates to just over 31,000 weekly seats offered by the carrier.
Sun Express and Condor, both predominately leisure charter carriers, also offer seat-only sales and are the second and third largest carriers respectively on the basis of seat capacity, followed by Lufthansa.(Source: Flightbase 14-20 June 2010)
Attraction to Antalya
There are over 2.8 million people with Turkish citizenship living in Germany. Add to that a strong, mature outbound leisure market as well as a focus on sunshine destinations and it is easy to see why carriers have not held back on putting seat capacity into Antalya from Germany.
The relatively short sector length of about three hours and a mature, but not overly priced, product in Turkey has made Antalya an attractive destination for tour operators, charter carriers and low-cost operators alike. The sector length is key, with airlines able to complete more rotations than at competing airports.
Airline Competition
There are currently 168 weekly flights from Germany into Antalya. The new German Sky can expect to face competition on the Düsseldorf sector from Turkish Airlines' twice-weekly service; Pegasus Airlines' four-times weekly flights; Tuifly's 4x weekly; Sun Express' seven-times weekly flights and Condor's 10 flights a week. (Source Flightbase 14-20 June 2010).
Can German Sky Impact the Market?
GTI Travel will be a key to any success that German Sky enjoys, as the tour operator will be able to sell Antalya as a package holiday to one of the largest outbound package holiday markets in the world.
Having the B737 based in the source market of Düsseldorf will also be a significant advantage. Plus, having based aircraft will give German Sky more tourist-friendly times, with a German-based schedule.
This could help German Sky compete with German-based low-cost airlines and certainly puts the airline at an advantage over Turkish-based third party operators such as Onur, Pegasus and Corendon, whose schedules mean an early departure from Turkey. It is fair to say that this isn't popular with tourists as they lose a day's holiday at either end.
But the key question for German Sky is - will the costs associated with setting up operations in Germany outweighed by the market preference for a German-based Turkish charter airline? Only time will tell.
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