Skift Take
With the reach of a Gulf carrier and the connections of a European carrier, Turkish Airlines knows where it stands and looks forward to Istanbul New Airport opening in 2017 to help it grow even faster.
Turkish Airlines CEO Temel Kotil has been at the helm of one of the world's fastest-growing carriers for a decade, but looking back isn't feasible when your hub is poised to become one of the world's busiest.
Kotil joined Turkish Airlines in 2003 and became CEO two years later, and since then has helped usher in strategies propelling the carrier to become a formidable player on the global aviation stage.
With its Istanbul hub positioned at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, anything except expansion and growth isn't an option. As Turkish Airlines looks to move into its new hub at Istanbul New Airport in 2018, it has plans to bring more comfort to the terminal experience for all passengers, not only business class travelers. And with an expected 120 million passengers a year flying through New Airport by 2020, implementing these new offerings and products won't be an easy task.
Skift sat down with Kotil last week to talk about how the airline differentiates itself from its Gulf carrier neighbors such as Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways, its social media strategies and how it's working to connect with a younger generation of travelers.
An edited copy of the interview can be read below:
Skift: How are Turkish Airlines' ambitions different from the ambitions of the Gulf carriers, i.e. Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways?
Temel Kotil: We’re a European airline but we have the highest number of originating destinations in the Middle East. We are in seven cities in Saudi Arabia and the eighth and ninth cities are coming. Also, we are feeding Africa to the world and are in 44 cities in Africa and this is more than any other airline flying to Africa. The high number of our originating destinations connecting to Africa is better than other airlines.
So what’s different for us from the Middle East carriers is that o
