The seasonality of the Cape Town market remains the biggest challenge for international airlines wanting to operate year-round daily flights to the Mother City.

Speaking to Tourism Update at Turkish Airlines’ annual golf event at Pearl Valley golf course in Franschhoek, Kenan Ince, Cape Town GM of Turkish Airlines, said while demand to Cape Town and passenger volumes had significantly increased in recent months, the airline would still switch back to servicing Cape Town through Johannesburg and Durban at the end of March, after flying directly to the city since the end of October last year.

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Cape Town will be served through Johannesburg three times a week between April and October, and through Durban four times a week. The switch in the Cape Town schedule means Durban will be served directly from Istanbul.

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“Our ultimate goal is to fly directly to Cape Town throughout the year but at the moment that is just not feasible due to the seasonality of the traffic demand in this particular market,” said Ince. He added that the airline would, however, again introduce direct flights from Cape Town to Istanbul on November 1.

“At the moment we are hesitant to put a date to a permanent direct flight between Cape Town and Istanbul, but we would like to see this happen by next year.”

Ince said he was extremely optimistic about the Cape Town market, which during the past five months of direct flights, had seen an increase of at least 84% in passenger volumes. “Growing the Cape Town market is therefore a top priority as we continue to see an increase in demand.”

Currently the business class seats on the Airbus 330, which is used to service Cape Town directly, are not sufficient, says Ince. “We only have 28 business class seats available and we know this is not enough. We are planning to increase this as soon as possible.”