After a lot of information and anticipation about whether Turkish Airlines will finally connect Australia and Europe, it will finally happen.
Turkish Airlines has announced lounching of flights to Melbourne starting from 15 March 2024. In the beginning, there will be three flights a week. The flights from March 15 to March 30 will be operated with Boeing 787-9 aircraft, while the flights from March 31 will be operated with Airbus A350-900 aircraft. The flight from Istanbul to Melbourne will be numbered TK168, while the return flight will be TK169. The flight to Melbourne will take 19 hours and 10 minutes, with an hour and a half stopover in Singapore. The return flight takes 20 hours and 20 minutes, with a stopover of one hour and forty minutes in Singapore.
The reason the flight needs to have a stopover in Singapore is that the current aircraft do not have the required range to connect Istanbul to Melbourne non-stop.
Timetable:
TK168 IST 17:00 – SIN 8:45+1 / SIN 10:15+1 – MEL 19:40+1
TK169 MEL 21:20 – SIN 02:50 / SIN 04:30+1 – IST 10:40+1
It will be interesting to follow the development of Turkish Airlines towards Australia because the competition between Europe and Australia is very strong with big names like Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific and Etihad Airways flying between the two continents. We also need to mention Qantas, which launched non-stop flights between Europe and Australia. For now, these flights depart from Perth to London, Paris, and Rome, but when the aircraft intended for this ultra-long haul flights arrive in their fleet, Qantas will fly from Sydney and Melbourne non-stop to European cities.
The great advantage of Turkish Airlines is that they have a very rich network of destinations in Europe, they fly to almost every small “village”, and because of this they have a great advantage compared to others that fly to fewer destinations in Europe.
When traveling from Zagreb, you will first have to take the Turkish Airlines morning flight to Istanbul. The connecting time to your next flight to Melbourne will be a little less than 5 hours. On the way back, if there is a 12:00p.m. flight to Zagreb, the connecting time is less than 2 hours, but if you must wait for the evening flight to Zagreb, the waiting time will be more than 7 hours.
