Australian Transport Minister triples Turkish Airlines’ air rights

Transport Minister Catherine King has signed off on a five-fold increase in flights to Turkey despite denying a request from Qatar Airways to double its capacity earlier this year and describing it as an “unprecedented” expansion. Australia’s air rights agreements were updated on December 15 to include new deals for Canada, France, Papua New Guinea, as well as the granting of so-called fifth freedoms for Turkish Airlines. This highly sought agreement gives the Turkish carrier the right to sell tickets for passengers wanting to go only to Singapore or another Middle Eastern port from Australia. Typically, airlines are only allowed to sell flights to their own “hub” city from Australia, which for Turkish Airlines is Istanbul. Seena Sarram, a lawyer who has worked for both Qantas and Qatar and now an academic at UNSW’s school of aviation, said the decision to grant Turkish Airlines such a large volume of air rights without any explanation of how its application was different from Qatar Airways showed a lack of respect for the public. “It’s clearly highly political and obvious that this is a political issue, nonetheless we being the flying public should do our best to take the politics out of it and ask the rational questions and ask why the policy isn’t being applied consistently,” Sarram said.<br/>