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The Directorate General of Civil Aviation, an agency affiliated with the Ministry of Transport, has instructed airlines companies to use Zafer Airport more frequently in an official letter.
As part of its policies to strengthen regional airports, the directorate said it expects more flights to be planned to these airports. It said the companies should revise their flight programs and increase the number of flights from Zafer Airport.
The directorate's order was revealed by Ali Kıdık, the editor-in-chief of the Airport Haber, an aviation news site, and the secretary of the İYİ (Good) Party's group in the İstanbul Municipal Council.
In addition to the written instructions, the directorate also called companies, advising them to use Zafer Airport instead of airports in Antep and Isparta, Kıdık said on Twitter. "The instruction given by an official communication was confirmed verbally over the phone," he wrote.
Making losses for a decade
Built by İC İçtaş company as part of a public-private partnership project, the Airport has been making losses since it opened in 2012.
The guaranteed number of passengers for the company for 2021 was 1,317,733 while only 22,936 people used the airport last year, which means the state paid the company for nearly 1.3 million passengers that didn't use the airport.
The guaranteed payments for the airport, whose period of operation is 29 years and 11 months according to the PPP project, will be about 196 million Euro by 2044.
According to the data published by the Directorate General of State Airports Authority (DHMI), a total of 688 planes, 640 domestic and 48 international, landed at Zafer Airport in 2021.
From 2021 to 2020, the state paid 45.9 million Euro to the company, whose investment cost was 61.1 million Euro.
Zafer Airport is planned to be used by the people of three cities, Kütahya, Afyon and Uşak, the total population of which is 1.67 million. (HA/VK)
