British passengers on a flight to Turkey consumed the plane’s entire alcohol stock in less than half an hour after the start of their 4-hour flight.
The incident occurred during a recent SunExpress flight. Max Kownatzki, the airline’s US-German CEO, described Britons as “higher spenders, more hedonistic” than passengers from other countries.
The airport from which the flight departed, the date and time of the flight or the number of passengers on board were not disclosed, but Kownatzki told TTG that it was a flight specifically aimed at golfers.
Explaining how quickly alcohol stocks were depleted, Kownatzki said:
Within 25 minutes of departure our beer and wine were all sold out, something we have never done in any other market.
The Turkish airline has almost doubled the number of airports it operates in the United Kingdom (UK) from 5 to 9 since 2022.
Kownatzki explained this rapid growth as follows:
Before that we had some exclusive routes but nothing big. We are already in third place behind Jet2.com and easyJet. We needed to venture more in terms of our network and that pushed us to look at the UK.
SunExpress flights operate from Birmingham, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Luton, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle, Manchester, Bristol and Newcastle in the UK and from existing Turkish routes including Antalya, Izmir and Dalaman. Adding Leeds Bradford and Stansted to the list for this summer, the airline aims to carry 1.3 million passengers with 136 flights per week. This is a leap from the 700,000 UK passengers traveling with SunExpress in the summer of 2023.
SunExpress, which has been operating for 35 years since its establishment in 1989 as a joint venture between Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines, was named Europe’s Best Holiday Airline in August 2023.
The Independent contacted SunExpress for comment but received no response.
