Turkey cancellations

Delete33

Anyone heard of large scale flight cancellations with Thomas Cook and Thompsons for May 2016.???????????????????????

Aletank

I'm planning on booking Turkey with Thomas Cook for May, was planning on booking 8 weeks before departure, I'm not bothered about a particular hotel/resort.
So hopefully this is not true !
What's made you think this ?

Delete33

Reports on trip advisor, looks like they are not cancelling flights but moving dates around?????????

bagand96

I suspect they are consolidating a lot of Turkey flights this summer. The Egypt/Tunisia events as well as the wider uncertainty in that area of the world is having an impact on Turkey bookings for Summer 16.

So whilst they aren't pulling out completely, they may be operating less flights. For example if they were planning on flying to a Turkish airport 3 times a week, they may be reducing it to 2 or even 1, and sending the aircraft to Spain/Greece/Portugal instead. This means they'll be looking to move people onto the remaining flights.

It's nothing new in package holidays and happens every year, although its far more pronounced this year with certain destinations.

suki1964

its often been the case in the past that if they don't sell enough beds, they cut the flights and change the flight times. I imagine with the immigrant and russian situation, a lot of people arent looking to book turkey

Pain in the bum for peeps like me who DIY, makes getting cheap flights very difficult

Pollycat

OH mentioned to me yesterday (from a stockbroker report on Tui) that bookings to Turkey are down by 40%.

stephb34

Not heard anything yet but both operators have lots of flights going each day. So instead of all the flights going half empty they will merge them so the ones that do go will be full.

lea2012

As mentioned above, both Thomson and Thomas Cook have this week reported that bookings for Turkey are down 40% this year so they are left with too much capacity.

Spain / Portugal seems to be in demand this year so they will cancel some flights that are running almost empty and use those aircraft to put extra flights on for popular areas instead.

Here's a couple of links on it:

http://news.sky.com/story/1638488/turkey-holidays-down-40-percent-on-security-worries

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/59474/tui-switches-capacity-as-turkey-slumps-40

littlereddevil

I know they have just cancelled flights from Aberdeen this summer

Alan_Bowen

Thomas Cooks confirmed yesterday that they have reduced capacity for Turkey this summer by 29%, and demand seems to be even well below that. That means a considerable number of flights which were intended to operate will be cancelled before the season begins, I am sure Thomsons will be doing the same. Slots (departure and arrival times at airports) are usually fixed at the end of February for the summer season, so I would expect any further changes to be announced in March