Turkish Airlines pushes back Australian flights to 2024

Turkish Airlines’ plans to begin flights to Melbourne in December have been scuppered by the Australian Government, with the airline saying it has still not received a response to its application to the federal Transport Minister and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. It now appears the Star Alliance carrier won’t be in a position to start its long-awaited flights connecting Istanbul and Australia until early 2024. “We are still to this day expecting a reply,” Turkish Airlines’ Australian manager Ahmet Halid Kutluoglu told a Senate committee into air service agreements this morning, as first reported in The Australian. Kutluoglu said it had been 45 days since the airline lodged its plans to begin flying to Australia, with Melbourne as the first port of call and Sydney to follow, and the delay left the carrier unable to launch Istanbul-Melbourne flights in December as it had hoped. "Our first plan was to start in December ... now it doesn't seem possible. It's important to have a quick response because in aviation everything is about planning. We need to allocate aircraft for the season but if you don’t have a certain starting date you have to allocate the aircraft elsewhere, you can’t pull it back," he explained.<br/>