Turkish leisure airline SunExpress will start connecting Izmir to Madrid for the Summer season of 2024. The new route was added this weekend in the weekly schedule changes of Cirium’s Diio Mi application.
The coastal city in Western Turkey will be connected to Madrid twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays, with the airline’s Boeing 737-800, which can carry up to 189 passengers.
SunExpress has also loaded changes to its route connecting Izmir to Barcelona, the one that, up until now, was its only one to and from Spain. Next Summer, on its peak between June and September, the route will be flown three times instead of the two weekly frequencies of the previous season.
This year, the route was started on June, and for 2024 the flight already had a weekly frequency loaded on Cirium from January to March. The weekend’s update added the flights from April. Flights in both routes are already available on SunExpress’ website.
SunExpress is a leisure-focused joint venture between Lufthansa Group and Turkish Airlines, with each company owning half of the airline. Its fleet, according to Planespotters.net, is currently composed of 49 Boeing 737-800, eleven 737 MAX 8 and six Airbus A320 wet-leased from Avion Express.
Regular traffic between Turkey and Spain is currently served by three airlines: Turkish Airlines, Pegasus Airlines and AnadoluJet, the low-cost branch of Turkish Airlines. A majority of the capacity is channelled through Istanbul’s main airport, where Turkish Airlines has its hub, providing connectivity beyond Turkey.
Pegasus connects Madrid to Istanbul’s second-largest airport, Sabiha Gökçen, while SunExpress has the two routes from Spain to Izmir.
As of this weekend’s Cirium update, for the third quarter of 2024 traffic in ASKs between the two countries is expected to be 5.2% higher versus the same period this year. This figure, however, is still subject to change.
