Pegasus aims to increase customers with KLM deal

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Pieter Bootsma, VP at KLM (L), and Güliz Öztürk, VP at Pegasus, pose for photographers following a codeshare cooperation deal between the companies. Company photo

Pegasus Airlines is looking to increase its passenger numbers with a new codeshare cooperation deal with Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM), the company announced at an Istanbul press conference today.

“We expect 35 to 40 new customers daily for our two flights from Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport to Amsterdam. We expect around 10 percent additional customers with this cooperation,” Güliz Öztürk, senior vice president at Pegasus, told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Pegasus is seeking to increase the number of its customers and flight destinations with its new codeshare agreement with KLM. The Dutch airline will start selling tickets on May 27 for flights from Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport and İzmir’s Adnan Menderes Airport to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport before transferring the customers to the United States and Canada on one ticket, Öztürk told the press conference in Istanbul, which was hosted by the Dutch Consulate.

KLM is also aiming for more customers from Turkey. “We hope to find a lot of KLM customers on Pegasus flights in the domestic market, Turkey. We see a figure of 40,000 to 50,000 [additional] passengers on a yearly basis,” Pieter Bootsma, executive vice president of marketing and revenue management and network for Air France and KLM, told the Daily News.

The firms said their price policies would not change with the collaboration. Customers will travel under one ticket from international destinations to Turkey and vice versa,