ME3 in Maps
Turkish Airlines offered what was arguably the smartest airline promotion ever. Fly via Istanbul today and flights connect seamlessly. But back around 2010 they did not have quite enough planes and many passengers had six, eight or ten hour connections.
Growing pains like these are a common experience across many carriers. But the clever people at Turkish Airlines turned the long connections to their advantage, offering free tours of fascinating Istanbul.
Wily tactics like this allowed Turkish Airlines to become a middle eastern mega-carrier, catching Qatar Airways and Emirates unawares. When people speak of the “mid-east-three” they normally mean Dubai-based Emirates, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad and Qatar Airways.
But with just 79 aircraft in service Etihad is quite small in comparison to Emirates (253), Qatar Airways (239) and Turkish Airlines (394). The real middle east three are Emirates, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines.
The three big middle eastern carriers have much in common – lots of connecting passengers, hubs in booming markets and high service standards. But look closer and they are quite distinctive.
In terms of on-board service Emirates has all the glamour. It is probably also strongest in loyalty and entertainment. Qatar Airways has the best business class seat (see article). And Turkish Airlines has the best food.
Their networks are all quite different too. Let’s explore how…
Flights, capacity & schedule consistency
Your favourite revenue economist took a week of schedule data from 15-Jun-23 to 21-Jun-23. This is northern summer with decent travel volumes, but not quite the peak of the school holidays. It is not to the best of his knowledge a public holiday in either Qatar, Turkey or UAE and it is not the holy month of Ramadan either.
He then took a look at the excellent LOPAs (see article) on aerolopa.com to see how many seats there are on each plane. Where one aircraft has multiple configurations he used an average. He ignored premium economy – Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines do not have it and Emirates has only just started it’s roll-out.
This table shows how many flights and seats each airline has, excluding fifth freedom services.
Points of note:
1. Turkish Airlines does not bother with Australia but has many more flights than anyone else to middle eastern, central asian and Russian destinations
2. Emirates has the most seats per week overall and 25.8% more economy class seats than Qatar Airways, even though Qatar Airways has more flights since the Dubai-based carrier only operates wide-bodies
3. Turkish Airlines has 72.9% more flights than Emirates but Emirates has 6.4% more seats since Turkish Airlines has a large number of single-aisles while Emirates has none.
There were some surprises. Emirates no longer flies to Lagos in Nigeria, a key trader route, for example – apparently there are issues with payments in Africa’s largest economy.
The next thing to look at was how consistent each airline’s schedule is. When airlines are enduring their growing pains they often try to fly to more destinations than they might otherwise achieve by using different planes at different times. These are called split schedules. This means that flights one day are different to flights another day.
There are three ways that an airline can split a schedule:
1. Split by time – flights leave at different times on different days
2. Split by aircraft – flights use different aircraft on different days
3. Split by flight number – flights have different numbers on different days.
These are not commutative. If a flight is split by time, the worst possible split from a passenger experience perspective, it may also be split by aircraft and/or flight number in this model. A flight counted as split by aircraft may also be split by flight number but not by time. A flight counted as split by flight number, which is irrelevant from a passenger experience perspective, will not be split by either time or aircraft.
The table below shows that at each big airline more than 90% of flights are consistent across the schedule. By way of comparison, at fast growing Ethiopian Airlines and poised-for-growth Kenya Airways 23.5% and 32.4% of flights respectively are in split schedules.
Emirates summarised in maps
Points of note:
1. Only 17 destinations have a less than daily service while 26 have treble-daily service or better
2. Both A380 and Boeing 777 fly to every continent
3. Flight numbering is extremely tidy, with each region having it’s own instantly recognisable set of numbers
4. Long-range fifth freedom sectors Milan to New York and Barcelona to Mexico City
Qatar Airways summarised in maps
Points of note:
1. More less-than-daily destinations than Emirates and a lower proportion of double- & treble-daily
2. A320 family generally serve short-range flights, but some wide-bodies are deployed on short-range when capacity requires it
3. Flight numbering is not quite as tidy as Emirates, but probably reflects the way things are managed in-house
4. No long-range fifth freedom services; one triangle in Africa.
Turkish Airlines summarised in maps
Points of note:
1. Proximity to western Europe permits double-daily or better services to a wide range of global cities, although except in the case of London Heathrow these are operated by single-aisles so the premium cabin experience is unlikely to be as good as on Emirates and Qatar Airways
2. Overnight flights to the middle east, Russia and Central Asia are also operated with single-aisles - Turkish Airlines has a schedule advantage to these destinations so no doubt seats are sold, but the passenger experience may not be as people expect
3. Flight numbering is not tightly defined, as two digit flights operate to Asia, Africa and the Americas, and there is no clearly worked regional model - to some extent it looks like Turkish Airlines add flight numbers as their network expands rather than in accordance with a regional model
4. Many more triangle flights than the other two airlines, including mid-range to Africa and long-range to the Americas – without triangles, Turkish Airlines might not serve as many destinations in Africa
5. Turkish Airlines operates a significant domestic network, unlike either Qatar Airways or Emirates.
Why does this comparison matter?
All three airlines appear to offer highly mature schedules leading to excellent connectivity and networks that are both broad and deep. There is probably scope for them to improve and expand, but the low-hanging fruit is likely gone and the process will be costly and complex.
Revenue managers at these airlines will know all about where they are strong and where they are at a competitive disadvantage. It is hard to see what further advantages systems vendors can offer.
But the big opportunity as this blog sees it is in how the aircraft themselves can be revenue generating platforms. Emirates’ all-wide fleet with it’s big galleys and comfy premium cabins offers plenty of scope for on-board retailing.
Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways will need to work hard on their single-aisle cabin seats to a surprisingly large range of destinations that are within the times that people want to sleep and need a flat bed.
All three carriers have big opportunities to use their on-board entertainment and connectivity platforms, and both digital and non-digital billboards, to offer down-route experiences for passengers when they arrive. Since each airline’s network is notably different it is likely that they will each calibrate what they offer differently. It will be exciting to see what happens next from the mid-east three.
oliver AT ransonpricing DOT com