SunExpress (XQ, Antalya) Chief Executive Officer Jaan Albrecht says the slump in demand for leisure flights to Turkey, brought on by the migrant crisis, the war in neighbouring Syria and domestic terrorist attacks, has forced the carrier to reposition its capacity to more buoyant markets this summer.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Albrecht said annual plans to lease in four B737-800s from Brazil's GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes (G3, São Paulo Congonhas) this summer had been dropped while capacity at its in-house fleet is being redeployed to other markets across Europe.
Albrecht said five B737-800s had been repositioned to SunExpress Deutschland (Frankfurt International) for use on charter flights from Germany to Spain and Portugal on behalf of tour operators such as TUI AG. SunExpress Deutschland will also operate four B737-800s from Düsseldorf on behalf of Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) by the end of the year. Two further aircraft have been leased to sister company AnadoluJet (Ankara Esenboga) while a third is in use on domestic flights, he added.
In total, Albrecht said the redeployment plan would see SunExpress operating twenty-five aircraft on its German AOC with fifty-nine remaining on its Turkish AOC.
