Turkish Airlines Cancels Flights Through May 28 | One Mile at a Time

Turkish Airlines has just extended cancellation of all of their flights even further once again, and I think this is pretty significant, for reasons I'll get into below.

Turkish Airlines extends flight suspension

Turkish Airlines has today announced an extension of their suspended service. Turkish Airlines has suspended all flights until May 28, 2020.

For some context:

t
• Turkish Airlines first suspended all international flights as of late March 2020 in accordance with a government mandate that indefinitely banned all international flights to the country; at the time they pulled all inventory through April 17, 2020
t
• In mid-April Turkish Airlines suspended all flights through May 20, 2020
t
• Now they're suspending cancellations by more than an additional week

Turkish Airlines has suspended all international flights

Why Turkish Airlines' suspension matters

With dozens of airlines around the world grounded, why am I calling out an extension of service cuts by Turkish Airlines specifically?

Well, because I think airlines like Turkish and Emirates are the ones to watch to get a sense of how international travel will recover:

t
• Turkish is among the most global airlines in the world, ordinarily flying to more countries than any other airline in the world
t
• I think watching Turkish Airlines will give a good indicator of when the global situation improves, in terms of borders opening, airline traffic picking up, etc.
t
• Emirates has an even more pessimistic outlook, and only plans to resume operations in July 2020

Of course Turkish Airlines doesn't have a crystal ball, and the situation at the airline is partly reflective of how the COVID-19 situation has also gotten worse in Turkey.

However, generally airlines are conservative when it comes to cancelling future flights. I do think airlines provide a good indicator of the best case scenario of demand recovering, which is to say that:

t
• If an airline says they'll resume service as of a certain date, I very well expect the timeline might be pushed back
t
• However, I definitely wouldn't expect the timeline to be pushed forward

While it's not surprising, I think the fact that Turkish is cancelling all flights for at least four more weeks is a good reminder that we shouldn't expect to go anywhere internationally in May.

I think most of us already knew that, though, and that's one of the reasons I'm planning domestic travel once it's safe and responsible to travel again.

Turkish flies to more countries than any other airline

Bottom line

Turkish Airlines has cancelled all flights through May 28, 2020. I think that's pretty noteworthy, given that Turkish is more or less the most global airline in the world.

It's not that I was expecting things to return to normal anytime soon, but my read based on this is "definitely don't expect to be traveling internationally prior to May 28" (which reinforces what I had assumed, rather than coming as a surprise).