Lufthansa Increases Flight Frequencies To Turkey

On June 22, 2007 Lufthansa hosted a press conference in Çiragan Palace with the participation of Joachim Steinbach; Vice President of Sales and Services in Southeast Europe, Africa, Middle East and Pakistan, Dirk Lorenzen: Director Operations & Airports in East Mediterranean, and Sadik Elmas; Lufthansa Turkey General Manager.

Lufthansa recorded 20% increase in capacity, 26.1% increase in passenger numbers in the first 5 months of 2007. Moreover, load factor reached 76.7% in the first 5 months of the year compare to 72.9% last year.

From left: Sadık Elmas, Joachim Steinbach, Dirk Lorenzen

Elmas said that the company didn't achieve a growth in Turkey market last year however they met with their targets. “Lufthansa's load factor between Turkey and Germany was 76.4% in 2006, whereas Lufthansa's world average was 75.2%. While celebrating 50 th year in Turkey , we contributed Lufthansa's success with €51,411,026.

Lufthansa that started summer schedule on 25 March 2007, increased their flight frequency from 53 to 70 in a week. Lufthansa flies Istanbul – Frankfurt, Istanbul – Munich three times in a day, Ankara – Munich two times in a day, Izmir-Munich two times in a day. Lufthansa will start additional flights to Frankfurt in July and August that will increase flight frequency to 77. “Our target for 2007 is to increase our profit by 12.5% to €57,870,000” said Elmas.

After the press conference we had chance to talk with Mr. Joachim Steinbach about Lufthansa's current standing, integration with Swiss, and Codeshare partners.

Please see below for our 9 minutes interview.