PAL Secures TK Codeshares

18 June 2015

After exhaustive negotiations, PAL finally secured code share deals with Turkish Airlines beginning July 1 initially with thrice weekly flights between Istanbul and Manila, Cebu and Davao, and vice versa to increase to daily flight services by October 2015.

The deal was signed by PAL President and Chief Operating Officer Jaime Bautista and Turkish Airlines Chief Executive Officer Dr. Temel Kotil during the recent International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual meeting in Miami, Florida.

Philippine Airlines will also be selling tickets soon from Antalya, Izmir, and Ankara to Manila, Cebu, and Davao while Turkish Airlines in turn will be selling on PAL’s domestic flights from Cebu and Davao to Turkey's other regional destination.

The expansion of the codeshare agreement will allow passengers to benefit from better connectivity and increased travel flexibility between the Philippines and Turkey and beyond the carriers’ respective networks.

Turkish Airlines is PAL's ninth international codeshare partner, along with Cathay Pacific, Etihad Airlines, All Nippon, Malaysia Airlines, Vietnam Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Air Macau and most recently Westjet.

Philippine Airlines is currently reviewing options to fly Frankfurt via Istanbul to which it has fifth freedom rights. Frankfurt is the busiest international destination from Istanbul jointly served by Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa. Germany is also the second biggest source of European tourists in the country after the UK.

“We are extremely pleased to sign this codeshare agreement with Philippine Airlines and aim to improve our partnership to maximise the travel opportunities offered to our passengers through the networks of both airlines.  Additionally, we believe that this partnership with Philippines Airlines will bring enormous benefit to both airlines from a commercial perspective in rapidly growing relations between our countries.” Kotil said.

Turkish Airlines is the fourth largest carrier in the world by number of destinations as of 2014.

7 comments:

  1. down the line.......TK can may be sponsor PR into Star Alliance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A lot of their codeshare are with Star Alliance. It's more likely PAL may end up with Star Alliance in the future.

      Delete
    2. *A has more than enough coverage in Asia. Also, codeshares don't necessarily lead to invitation to alliances. Frequent-flier program partnerships might be more important.

      Delete
  2. MNL-IST-FRA would be good to put into use these under utilized A330... Maybe this is one of their targets after reconfiguring their all-economy A330.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Possibly, following their strategy in Canada.

      Delete
    2. Does A330 have the range to fly MNL-IST ?

      Delete
    3. Yes. The 368 seater A330 variant can fly all the way to IST. With more reason the soon to be re-configured pair of monoclass variant into 311 seater as per CAPA. I would assume this to be on 2-4-2 configuration. I would suppose too that this pair will be the ones hip hopping Paris and Frankfurt soon following the airlines strategy in Canada.

      Delete