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After a more than 500% surge, Turkey’s national carrier has contributed the most to the country’s world-leading stock rally this year. And its chairman doesn’t see gains stopping there. Turk Hava Yollari AO, or Turkish Airlines as the company is known internationally, aims for its shares to rise to $10 (about 180 liras), Ahmet Bolat told group of reporters in Miami, 50% above Wednesday’s closing price. He didn’t give a timeframe for the goal, according to a report in Milliyet newspaper. Turkish Airlines has provided the biggest thrust to this year’s 172% gain in the Borsa 100 Index, which leads the world in both local currency and dollar terms. Its 523% increase is also the most among global airlines. The stock has been boosted as Turkey’s plunging currency has added to the country’s allure as a top destination for foreign travelers. According to state-run Anadolu Agency, Turkey is targeting $50b in tourism revenue next year, up from $41b envisioned for 2022. That, coupled with a boom in freight business, has boosted optimism that Turkish Airlines would return to capacity levels seen before the pandemic. According to Bolat, the carrier aims to double the number of US passengers visiting Turkey to 2m, making the country the second-top destination for American citizens, after the UK. Analysts are in accord with the chairman, whose goal for the stock is higher than the average price target of 145.57 liras, or $7.81.<br/>

Scandinavia’s SAS expects to commence its crucial SKr9.5b ($907m) equity raise around the end of January, after the schedule for its ‘SAS Forward’ restructuring programme slipped. The airline is re-organising under US Chapter 11 protection and expects to exit the process in the second half of next year, says CE Anko van der Werff, owing to “some delay” with items such as internal negotiation deadlines, which it had hoped to complete in October. SAS has been discussing revised agreements with personnel representatives as part of the ‘SAS Forward’ plan to cut costs. It states that it has reached new arrangements with two Norwegian cabin crew unions, NKF and SNK, which will run to the end of March 2024. This will largely involve an extension of an existing pact from 2020 with “some minor changes”. SAS has stressed that “all parties”, internal and external, will need to contribute to the restructuring scheme in order to transform the company. Speaking during the carrier’s full-year financial briefing, van der Werff said the delay in the schedule would amount to “a few months”. The airline drew the first $350m tranche of a $700m debtor-in-possession financing agreement in September, and expects the remaining $350m tranche to be available for use in Q1 of its current fiscal year – the three-month period to the end of January 2023. This second tranche has conditions attached and van der Werff says the airline wanted to have “clarity” by October. But he says the company has to progress “step by step” and acknowledges that, as a result of the delay, the timeline for starting the equity raise – which SAS had expected this year – will probably be “kicked down the road a bit further”, to the end of January 2023, “at the earliest”. <br/>

Croatia Airlines is expected to begin phasing out its Dash 8 turboprop fleet in 2024 as it prepares to become a single-type operator of the Airbus A220 jet. The carrier has ordered six of the A220-300s and has also concluded an agreement to lease up to nine of the aircraft, which are expected to include the -100 version as well. Croatia Airlines’ existing six-member turboprop fleet is under an operational lease. The agreement was concluded in 2007 for a period of ten years. The lease was then extended for two aircraft until 2024 and for the rest until 2025. Once the leases expire, the airline does not plan to renew them in order to make way for the new A220s, which will begin entering the fleet in 2024, with deliveries to be made until 2026. The 76-seat Dash fleet has been a workhorse for the airline over the past two years, when demand for travel plummeted as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, the turboprops were deployed on a total of 10.885 flights compared to the Airbus jet fleet which was utilised on 5.662 flights. Furthermore, the Dash aircraft spent more time in the air than the Airbuses, with an average of seven hours and twenty minutes of flying per day. Croatia Airlines owns a total of five aircraft, including four A319s and one A320. Three of those aircraft (two A319s and one A320) act as collateral for bank loans.<br/>

For decades, Singapore Airlines has wanted to take pole position in India, tipped to be the world’s third-largest aviation market by the middle of the decade, if not sooner. Now that the opportunity to be a 25% owner of the nation’s largest international and second-largest local carrier has come knocking, CE Goh Choon Phong is happy to write a US$250m cheque. But India’s siren song can also be treacherous. Its heavily regulated sectors, such as telecommunications and aviation, have a history of being unpredictable. Singapore Telecommunications Ltd got lucky in its choice of partner. Bharti Airtel Ltd remains a solid No. 2 in the Indian wireless market after years of intense upheaval. Goh would hope for the same stability from his partner, the 154-year-old Tata Group – perhaps even more, given the aviation industry’s natural tendency to destroy capital. All that’s in the future, though. Right now, it’s handshake time. Vistara, a joint venture of the Tata Group and SIA, is being merged with Air India. The loss-making national carrier went to the local conglomerate when New Delhi sold it last year. Now, Tata will hold 74.9% of the merged entity; Singapore Air will fork out a little over US$250m for 25.1%. An expansion is also on the cards. Air India CEO Campbell Wilson – a Singapore Air veteran – wants to triple his fleet in five years. That purchase, among the most aggressive in the industry after the pandemic, may increase SIA’s investment by another US$615m. Story has more.<br/>