The two airlines Turkish Airlines and Thai Airways want to work more closely together and establish a joint venture for air traffic between Turkey and Thailand. Thai Airways will then fly daily from Istanbul to Bangkok in the future. Turkish Airlines is now flying to Bangkok twice a day and is expanding.
Interesting for vacationers: There should also be direct connections from Germany and other European cities via Istanbul. The planes then make a stopover in Istanbul before continuing on to the Thai capital.
The aim is to establish Istanbul as a bridge from Europe to Asia and Africa. This should also make Thailand more attractive to Europeans, as Bilal Eksi, head of Turkish Airlines, explained at a press conference.
Are prices going down now?
Most likely.
So far, travelers between Germany and Bangkok have mostly only been able to fly via Thai Airways, TAP Air Portugal, Lufthansa and Air Canada. The connections with Qatar Airways or Emirates with a stopover in Doha or Dubai are also cheap.
For a return flight from Munich at the end of October within ten days, travelers pay just under 890 euros from Munich. From February 2024, interested parties will even find offers for 600 euros.
As confirmed by Turkish Airlines on request, both airlines are already cooperating. However, this should be noticeable for travelers from December.
Isn’t that bad for the environment?
Depends on the route.
Sustainability is also a big topic when traveling, but you often can’t do without flying – even if it’s unquestionably bad for the environment. Airplanes emit a lot of carbon dioxide and other climate-damaging substances through the kerosene they burn.
According to calculations by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), each passenger on a direct flight from Munich to Bangkok causes an estimated 306 kilograms of carbon dioxide. With CO2 compensation payments, travelers can at least pay a voluntary compensation for the greenhouse gases that are produced during their trip.
The providers usually use the money to finance climate protection measures such as the construction of biogas or solar systems or the reforestation of forests. With some airlines, sustainable fuels – so-called SAFs (“Sustainable Aviation Fuels”) – can also be selected as a compensation variant.
“Anyone who wants to fly sustainably today can choose, for example in the booking process, that they want to fly 50 percent sustainably with sustainable kerosene and 50 percent with subsidized climate protection projects,” explains Wolf-Dietrich Kindt, who is responsible for climate control at the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry. and environmental protection. “But it is also possible to fly 100 percent climate-neutral with sustainable kerosene.”
Airlines such as KLM, Thai Airways and Lufthansa are already using small amounts of sustainable fuel and offer to fully or partially offset the CO2 footprint caused by the flight with SAF – for a corresponding surcharge. For a Lufthansa flight from Berlin to New York, for example, you would have to pay a surcharge of 308.74 euros if the CO2 offset is to be made exclusively with sustainable kerosene.