Turkish Airlines is expanding its presence in the United States by adding flights to Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport (MSP). The route is expected to launch sometime in the spring and will be the 15th U.S. destination for the Star Alliance carrier.
The new route was initially reported by airline route guru, IshrionA, on Twitter/X. While information is limited at this time, and the only news aside from fellow travel bloggers is in Turkish, here’s what we know (thank you Google Translate).
Flights between the carrier’s hub at Istanbul Airport (IST) and Minneapolis-St. Paul are expected to launch sometime in April or May. No information has been given on the aircraft type, frequency, or flight schedule at this time.
The launch of service to Minneapolis-St. Paul is interesting but not completely out of the blue. Last summer the carrier identified four markets in the United States that it was eyeing for expansion and MSP was on the list along with Charlotte CLT), Philadelphia (PHL) and Orlando (MCO).
Minneapolis-St. Paul is a major hub for Delta Air Lines and the carrier has aggressively defended its market share there recently, going head to head with other carriers that enter the market.
While I don’t see Delta adding flights between the Midwest and Istanbul, Delta currently doesn’t fly to Istanbul from any of its hubs, it will be interesting to see if they add any additional transatlantic capacity to other, European, SkyTeam hubs. Personally, I don’t believe that they will as the airline doesn’t have a partner in Europe with the same connectivity as Turkish does from its Istanbul hub.
According to some reports, 11% of the population of Minneapolis-St. Paul is made up of immigrants. With Turkish Airlines flying to more countries than any other carrier in the world, I can definitely see this route lasting long term even if it is mostly filled with VFR (visiting friends and relatives) traffic.
Summary
Turkish Airlines is planning to launch flights between Istanbul and Minneapolis-St. Paul. While very little information has been provided at this point, the route is expected to launch sometime in the spring of 2025. Aircraft type, frequency, and schedule are still unknown at this time and will be announced in the next few months.
In the last year or so, MSP has seen an increase in new airlines coming to MSP with transatlantic service.
I am very much looking forward to flying MSP-IST since IST has flights to a lot of places not served by AF-KL, Delta and Virgin and thus expands the number of single connection options available from MSP.
I’m flying TK for the first time in March and looking forward to it, even if the hard product is subpar.