RYR vs Turkish Market

[JanetFlight]

Hi...just wondering...if Turkey its such a colossal destination regarding tourism. Thousands of emmigrants in several EU Countries, etc, why RYR not yet focusing on it?
Besides the fact it shares a part geographical divided between Europe&Asia, however it really does have an impact in Europe markets, my 2 cents.
And Turkey's keeping away from the unhealthy "EURO €" crisis, affecting almost every EU right now, and wich FR flies into on a "daily and hundreds" basis...
Are there any plans for near times, routes, etc?
Or it really does have an explanation we dont know why?
Cheers..JF

[JSCL]

I was of the impression that FR would have to gain traffic rights if it were to fly outside of Ireland>Turkey market. It also defeats the point of 'loco' by flying those long sectors each day and the UK>Turkey market is definitely crowded all year round. To other EU destinations, it may work. But I don't think TK will let FR have an easy ride on their home territory. TK is a beat at the moment, a very quick moving and ever growing beast.

[vctenderness]

Quite a few loco's in the Turkish market at the moment including Easyjet, Monarch, Thomas Cook, Pegasus.

BA pulled out of Izmir a while back but do have a LHR Bodrum charter op for Mark Warner holidays.


Don't think the market suits Ryanair due to sector length.

[Cyrano]

Originally Posted by JSCL

I was of the impression that FR would have to gain traffic rights if it were to fly outside of Ireland>Turkey market.

I believe the individual EU states' bilaterals with Turkey have been replaced with an EU-level agreement (i.e. any EU carrier can fly from anywhere in the EU to Turkey). See this soporific EC document.

I could guess that the reasons FR doesn't fly to Turkey include:

• long sector lengths
• plenty of capacity already
• low-cost operators (including Pegasus etc) at aggressively low yields
• quite healthy Turkish air transport market, meaning a lack of desperate Turkish airport operators willing to hand over fistfuls of lira in subsidies to Ryanair

[jabird]

quite healthy Turkish air transport market, meaning a lack of desperate Turkish airport operators willing to hand over fistfuls of lira in subsidies to Ryanair

No, but SAW is one of the bigger secondary airports and operated separately to IST.

There is no current operator from the UK to ESB.

They serve the Canaries, and also Morocco - which afaik has a similar deal to Turkey. How relevant is airport cost on these longer sectors anyway?

It took FR a long time to get into Greece, but they are in there now (whatever economic issues, people can still come in to spend money, but many people will avoid Athens, where FR don't fly anyway).

So is Turkey just a matter of time, or is there a genuinely significant obstacle?

[PPRuNeUser0176]

It took FR a long time to get into Greece, but they are in there now (whatever economic issues, people can still come in to spend money, but many people will avoid Athens, where FR don't fly anyway).

So is Turkey just a matter of time, or is there a genuinely significant obstacle?

They may be in Greece now but they are closing all Rhodes and Kos from first week in October over marketing support, I can see others being closed fairly quickly as well as Greece can't afford FR.

[apaul]

Conversely, Turkey has no need to bribe Ryanair with 'marketing support' as there are plenty of other airlines willing to fly the routes.

[davidjohnson6]

Airports in Istanbul and Antalya (i.e. the equivalent to Paris or Nice) have no need to pay marketing support to Ryanair but would some of Turkey's smaller airports consider this to boost traffic ?

[jabird]

They may be in Greece now but they are closing all Rhodes and Kos from first week in October over marketing support, I can see others being closed fairly quickly as well as Greece can't afford FR.

Hmm. The Greek economy is just going to get on fine without Ryanair then!

Yup!

(Sorry, not trying to be flippant - but if you look at CAA stats over the last decade, Greece is one of the few major destinations to show consistent decline in traffic, as opposed to most countries which show growth until around 2008, then slow decline in last few years.

The other European country with a big decline is Belgium. Now there is an obvious reason for that, but I don't see Eurostar opening train services to Athens any time soon. The current mess Greece is in isn't just about the euro - if they are sending potential tourism revenue away, when most countries are able to work with Ryanair, then don't they only have themselves to blame? Especially as traffic to the Greek islands is almost all bringing visitors in as opposed to taking locals out.)