Turkish Airlines already flies to more countries than any other airline in the world, and now the airline is adding yet another country to its network. Best of all, this is yet another fun fifth freedom option.
Turkish Airlines launching flights to Santiago, Chile
Turkish Airlines will soon be launching flights to Chile. The Star Alliance airline will start flying to Santiago (SCL), but it won’t be a nonstop flight from Istanbul (IST). Instead, it’ll be a continuation of one of the carrier’s existing flights to Sao Paulo (GRU).
As of December 12, 2024, Turkish Airlines will launch the following flight 4x weekly:
TK215 Istanbul to Sao Paulo departing 8:35PM arriving 4:15AM (+1 day)
TK215 Sao Paulo to Santiago departing 5:50AM arriving 9:45AM
TK216 Santiago to Sao Paulo departing 11:40AM arriving 3:15PM
TK215 Sao Paulo to Istanbul departing 4:50PM arriving 11:20AM (+1 day)
Turkish Airlines will use an Airbus A350-900 for the route. The entire journey covers a distance of 8,179 miles, with the long haul flight being 6,553 miles, and the tag flight being 1,626 miles.
For what it’s worth, Turkish Airlines currently flies 11x weekly to Sao Paulo. The daily service will continue as before (it actually connects to Buenos Aires), while the 4x weekly service will soon connect to Santiago.
Santiago is now Turkish Airlines’ second furthest destination, in terms of distance from Istanbul, as it’s over 8,000 miles away (the longest is Melbourne, which is over 9,000 miles away, and that’s served via Singapore).
South America has fun fifth freedom flights!
Turkish Airlines’ new flight between Brazil and Chile is a fifth freedom service, meaning passengers can fly with the airline exclusively within South America, which is a fun way to fly. It’s certainly much better than the experience you’ll get on LATAM, or any other local airlines serving the market.
South America has quite a robust network of fifth freedom routes, given the distance between South America and many other points in the world. This allows airlines to serve a couple of destinations with a single long haul flight. Just looking at the southern part of South America, here are some of the routes that come to mind:
- Air Canada, Ethiopian Airlines, SWISS, and Turkish Airlines, all fly from Sao Paulo (GRU) to Buenos Aires (EZE)
- British Airways and Emirates fly from Rio de Janeiro (GIG) to Buenos Aires (EZE)
- KLM flies from Buenos Aires (EZE) to Santiago (SCL)
Bottom line
As of December 2024, Turkish Airlines will launch a new service to Santiago via Sao Paulo. This complements Turkish Airlines’ existing fifth freedom flight from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires. It’s always cool to see more fifth freedom routes in South America, and this particular route wasn’t previously served by any foreign airlines, so that makes this all the better.
Turkish Airlines is already a massive airline, but the carrier keeps getting bigger, and has huge growth plans.
What do you make of Turkish Airlines launching flights to Sao Paulo?
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