Turkish Airlines flies to more countries than any other airline in the world. One major gap in Turkish Airlines’ network is Australia, as the airline doesn’t even fly to the continent. Fortunately that’s going to change in the coming months, and flights are now on sale.
Continue reading: Turkish Airlines Will Fly To Melbourne, Australia!
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Ben, I think you have a typo. Look at the flight times.
TK168 Istanbul to Singapore departing 5:00PM arriving 10:15AM (+1 day)
TK168 Singapore to Melbourne departing 10:15AM arriving 7:40PM
Do you think we can get this flight price for 67k miles, according to Turkish award chart? Can we get a stopover in Singapore?
I live in Melbourne and I’m excited by this. I’ve flown Turkish Airlines only once, on a short-haul flight from Istanbul to Budapest, but even that experience was the best short-haul flight I’ve ever taken. The lounge in Istanbul was amazing (that food!), the seats were comfortable, and the food and beverage offering was great. It was a novelty to have a real Turkish coffee in the sky and I can’t wait to try one again!
Finally, Turkish Airlines is starting service to Australia. That was the only piece of the puzzle that was missing in the airline’s network.
Nice to see the airline that flies to the most countries finally join the 6-continent club!
Fantastic news and a great addition . Certainly good to have a non ME carrier choice for a change
So they'll compete with Star Alliance heavyweight Singapore airlines for this routing! Think would've made since to make the stop point to some underserved market for flights to Australia, perhaps Pakistan or Bangladesh!
Bhutan! Why not stop over in Bhutan? Or if that doesn't work maybe Nepal?? TK is craaaaaazy for not choosing these underserved markets for stop overs. Flashy, first world airports offering all those pesky conveniences like Changi and Istanbul are a real turn-off for us Antipodeans and Turks.
Seattle-Melbourne via IST and Singapore. That would be one heck of a journey. Do they have an award chart for this?
To those wondering why Turkish chose Singapore over an underserved market, it probably made more sense to take market share of the Singapore- Melbourne and Singapore has pretty generous 5th freedom rules for foreign airlines.
"Think would've made since to make the stop point to some underserved market for flights to Australia, perhaps Pakistan or Bangladesh!"
What would be their incentive to do that though? Barring artificial political restrictions, markets (that are already hubs to longhaul airlines, like DAC and KHI/etc) without a lot of service in a particular area, tend to be that way for a reason.
Not in T1 they’re using. The TG lounge there has permanently closed, so they’ll have to use a contract lounge.
While it’s possible to go to the SQ lounges in T1/T3 airside, it’s not that convenient and the SQ *G lounge leaves a lot to be desired.
A stop in Pakistan would've been a great idea. There is a lot of demand for travel between Pakistan and Australia (mostly consisting of students abroad and people going back to Pakistan to visit family). And the cost for a flight between the two countries is quite expensive with the current options (unlike flights from Pakistan to the U.S./UK).
There aren't many flight routes from Pakistan to East Asia outside of PIA's routes, Thai Airways (which serves ISB, LHE, and KHI), and Malindo Air who serves LHE, and a few Chinese airlines fly to ISB and KHI (Air China and China Southern I believe). As a result, passengers wanting to fly to SE Asia or Oceania from Pakistan have to connect through Thai Airways or the Middle East, both of which charge around 2K per round-trip ticket in my experience. Turkish could match that price and offer a nonstop flight. And they have good brand recognition in Pakistan, and a partnership with PIA. But there wouldn't be much demand in Business Class, so maybe Turkish thinks they can get better yields out of Singapore. But out of all of the fifth freedom route opportunities from Pakistan, I think Australia is the best one in terms of yeilds (Europe and North America is already well served by other airlines who are also quite cheap).
Great news. Hard to get Oceania to Europe. Will give SQ a run for their money. Maybe will see more SQ award availability on the MEL-SIN route. Will be monitoring star alliance programs for availability on these new routes.
bitter! What a great city and great country. Melbourne and Sydney are two of the great cities of the world hun. Suck it up.