Turkish-German carrier eyes expansion to back tourism

By Tuba Sahin</p> <p>ANKARA (AA) – Turkish-German carrier SunExpress will offer a record high capacity of 6.4 million seats in its international flights for summer 2019.</p> <p>The airlines will also significantly expand its flight frequencies between Turkey and Europe, it said in a statement. </p> <p>Antalya-based SunExpress was founded as a joint venture of Turkish Airlines and Germany's Lufthansa in 1989. The carrier flies to 90 destinations in more than 30 countries.</p> <p>SunExpress CEO Jens Bischof said that the company will operate direct flights from 16 points in Turkey to 36 destinations in Europe with adding new routes in the upcoming summer.</p> <p>He remarked that the carrier offered 5 million seats to the touristic regions of Turkey last summer season.</p> <p>&quot;We will now continue to support Turkish tourism to get back to record breaking numbers in 2019,&quot; said Bischof.</p> <p>The statement also said that the company will also start connecting Dalaman and Bodrum to Europe by March 2019. </p> <p>The carrier will add new Anatolian destinations to its flight network as direct scheduled flights to Anatolia is the fastest growing market of SunExpress. </p> <p>Pointing the importance of Turkish customers living in Europe, Bischof said:</p> <p>&quot;Compared to last summer, we will offer 30 percent or almost 1 million more seats to this beautiful part of Turkey.&quot;