- Turkish Airlines intensifies competition for European transfer traffic
- Istanbul Airport handled 84.4m passengers in 2025
- Airline secured approval for €300m investment in Air Europa
- Turkish Airlines named Europe’s Best Airline at 2026 Skytrax Awards
- Fleet aiming for 810 plus aircraft by 2033
Turkish Airlines is intensifying competition for European transfer traffic by expanding its global hub-and-spoke model and executing strategic investments to capture flows that traditionally belonged to Western European legacy carriers. By leveraging Istanbul Airport’s vast capacity, a rapidly growing fleet aiming for 810 plus aircraft by 2033 and targeted investments like its acquisition of a stake in Spain’s Air Europa the airline is challenging major European groups as well as its Gulf rivals.
In a major move finalised in mid-2026 Turkish Airlines secured approval for a €300m investment to acquire a 26pc stake in Air Europa. This provides the carrier with a strategic western wing in Madrid linking traffic from Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East directly to Latin America through an integrated Istanbul-Madrid bridge. Executive leadership has explicitly targeted building a second corridor between Asia and Europe directly competing for high-yield long-haul transfer traffic with Gulf carriers like Emirates and Qatar Airways.
Unlike geographically western hubs or Gulf hubs Turkish Airlines utilises its unique geographical position to serve secondary European cities profitably offering up to 18,000 alternative flight pairs eastbound out of average European cities. To capture high-value business travellers the carrier has heavily leaned into product differentiation and was named Europe’s Best Airline for the 11th time at the 2026 Skytrax World Airline Awards while climbing to 5th place globally.
