Pegasus Airlines continues its steep climb as one of Europe’s fastest-growing and ambitious low-cost carriers
“In five years’ time I see Pegasus with the claim of being an international airline, a pioneering digital LCC, running around 170 aircraft and covering a wide international network,” Güliz Öztürk, Chief Executive of Pegasus told the Routes conference, when interviewed by Routes Editor-in-Chief David Casey.
Öztürk has led Pegasus since May 2022, when she was made CEO after a decade as Chief Commercial Officer. She joined the carrier in 2005, when it had a fleet of 14 aircraft and was beginning its transition from a charter operator to an LCC.
Just two weeks prior to Routes, Pegasus took delivery of its 100th aircraft, an Airbus A321neo, at the Airbus factory in Hamburg. This year the carrier will receive a total of 16 A321neos, which are configured with 239 seats, and it has a strong orderbook with 74 A321s scheduled for delivery up to 2029, explained Öztürk.
A major boost for Pegasus as it seeks to expand is another runway at its home base of Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul, which is scheduled to open in November. “It means a lot to us as we’ve been waiting for the second runway for about 110 months,” said Öztürk. “But it doesn’t stop there as we need a second terminal (see related story on p31).”
Öztürk is content to continue the rise of Pegasus with a focus on narrowbody aircraft and has not considered adding widebodies. “There are 500 destinations covered within the range of our fleet and we are only flying to 130 of them,” she said, indicating that the airline has plenty of scope to grow.
Transit point
For centuries, Istanbul has been a natural connecting point between Europe and Asia. And although the classic LCC playbook does not include transfer traffic, this favourable geographic location has enabled Pegasus to adapt the model and embrace a transit product.
Today 25% of its traffic is transit, and “connecting traffic gives us a competitive advantage,” said Öztürk. The “red line” for Pegasus is “if it threatens our on-time performance or our aircraft utilisation, which take priority over connectivity. We are very careful on that,” she said.
Pegasus began its scheduled network growth in Turkey, where it now serves 32 cities, and continued by adding destinations across Western Europe. Today, Pegasus has 130 destinations in 49 countries, including the build-up of a significant route network into countries in the Middle East, CIS countries and central Asia.
“These are high-yield markets where LCC penetration is low and since we started developing the network into those regions traffic has really increased,” she said.
In addition to growing to the east, where it is looking for another 30 destinations, Pegasus will increase frequencies on its western European network to bolster inbound traffic into Turkey, so its traffic profile is “balanced in both the east and west”, said Öztürk.
A major spin-off of the international growth at Pegasus is that its non-Turkish Lira income is strong, with 80% of its revenues in hard currency, she explained.
In addition to its Istanbul hub at Sabiha Gökçen, where it has about 70 aircraft today, Pegasus has a significant base at Antalya where it will operate some 20 aircraft in 2024.
For the foreseeable future Pegasus will focus on growing at Sabiha Gökçen and is not considering an operation at the city’s iGA Istanbul Grand Airport. “I want to use my capacity on Sabiha Gökçen. Sharing the capacity in Istanbul is not wise or feasible right now,” she said.
