Will Indian travellers now treat Turkey and Azerbaijan as Maldives was treated?

As Operation Sindoor took centrestage, the murmur going on for the past many months took to some strong voices asking for a boycott of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Social media was flooded with statistics, some verified, some unverified on how many passengers from India travelled to these countries. As the ceasefire announcement was being made, more and more travel companies decided to not take bookings for Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Cox & Kings decided to pause bookings to Turkey, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. This was followed by Ixigo deciding against taking bookings for Azerbaijan, Turkey and China. Many smaller Travel Management Companies have joined this and advised against travel to Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Why are companies doing this?

Turkey, Azerbaijan and China have come out openly in support of Pakistan during Operation Sindoor with the Turkish drones being used in large quantities against India. These countries have also shown open support to Pakistan and Pakistan's claim over Kashmir in the past.

While there is no direct air connectivity between India and China currently, there are direct flights to Turkey and Azerbaijan. IndiGo and Turkish Airlines offer one flights each to Delhi and Mumbai from Istanbul, a total of 28 weekly departures. IndiGo has a daily flight to Baku from Delhi, while Azerbaijan airways operates Delhi and Mumbai, a total of seven flights a week split between the two cities.

Turkey - the eye of storm

When Air India decided to appoint İlker Aycı as its CEO, there was an uproar like no other which eventually led to Ilci pulling out on his own. The co-operation between the Indian aviation ecosystem and Turkey has been much bigger than just one person. Turkish Airlines was the first codeshare partner for IndiGo and IndiGo operates Turkish Airlines B777 on damp lease to Istanbul, thereby increasing its passengers per flight to 531 from 232. It also operates a couple of damp leased B737s from Corendon, a Turkish Airline.

Turkish Technic, the engineering arm of Turkish Airlines, has deals with IndiGo and Air India for various services. Recently Turkish Technic informed about their new deal with Air India for nose-to-tail maintenance of Air India’s Boeing 777 fleet, while there already is a deal in place for maintenance of Air India Express 737 aircraft. IndiGo also has deals with Turkish Technic for redelivery checks as well as maintenance checks on the A320neo family.

What next?

It seems highly unlikely that airlines will get away from the deals in place, especially on the engineering side.

However, the market dynamics dictates the flights and capacity. Maldives, for example, has far fewer flights to India today than what it had even during the pandemic, as Indians ditched Maldives for other points. If such a situation arises with Turkey and Azerbaijan, airlines will be commercially forced to reduce capacity due to lack of passengers.

As per Azerbaijan Tourism Board, only 4,853 Indians visited Azerbaijan in 2014. The number stood at 243,589 in 2024. The tourism board expects a growth of 11% from now until the next 10 years. Turkey saw Indian arrivals at 3,30,000 passengers in 2024, while the number stood at 119,503 in 2014 as per the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey. 

There are roughly 13000 seats between India and Turkey each way on a weekly basis, while Azerbaijan and India have a little over 3000 seats each way on a weekly basis. There remain many one-stop options to both these countries.

Tail note

It is too early to tell if this will be successful, but the last time such a clarion call was made on social media was against Maldives and the number of Indians visiting Maldives has dwindled substantially since then. The India - China air connectivity restart has been in the talks for a long time, but are yet to start. Civil Aviation and diplomacy are now more closely linked than ever with aviation and connectivity a major tool in geopolitics. However, will it have an impact on the numbers, will the airlines voluntarily announce suspensions? They have never done that in the past, and they may not do not it, unless there is a commercial impact.