Turkish Airlines drops Luanda as Angola's new airport struggles

Turkish Airlines has permanently axed its Luanda route, the latest in a series of international carriers to drop the Angolan capital since Angola inaugurated its new airport in 2023.The Istanbul-based carrier removed Luanda from its future schedule earlier this month, along with Juba, Kinshasa, Libreville and Lusaka, after those services had been suspended through 24 October.Turkish Airlines initially described the suspension as temporary when it announced the move in April, citing fuel costs.It had operated a triangular service through Kinshasa rather than a direct connection, but the route gave Luanda passengers onward access to destinations across Europe, Asia and beyond via Istanbul.Brussels Airlines ended its Luanda service on 25 March 2025 as part of a restructuring within the Lufthansa Group, redirecting passengers onto Lufthansa's direct Frankfurt–Luanda flights.TAAG Angola Airlines suspended its Madrid route — codeshared with Iberia — in January 2024 and later removed a planned return from its schedule.Iberia never reversed its decision to suspend flights to Luanda, in place since 2016, opting instead to codeshare with TAAG since 2022. That link is now gone as well.South African Airways (SAA) also only places its code on TAAG-operated flights.Low passenger numbers plague new airportThe departures come as Angola's Dr António Agostinho Neto International Airport, about 45km from central Luanda, struggles to establish itself as the regional hub the government promised when it inaugurated the facility in November 2023.Built by Chinese state-owned company AVIC and designed for a maximum annual capacity of 15 million passengers, the airport handled 756,028 passengers in all of 2025, according to figures from the airport's temporary operator ATO.By 24 February of this year, total passenger numbers since the first domestic flight in November 2024 stood at 1,090,861, including 444,212 international passengers.The full transfer of services from the old Quatro de Fevereiro airport was completed on 1 March — more than two years after the inauguration — when South African carrier Airlink moved its Johannesburg flights to the new facility.In December 2025, ATO's Director of Planning and Quality Vissolela Chivunda said the airport expected around 4 million passengers in 2026.Luanda remains served by TAP Air Portugal, Air France, Lufthansa, Royal Air Maroc, Ethiopian Airlines, Qatar Airways, Airlink and TAAG, alongside Compagnie Africaine d'Aviation, which began two weekly flights from Kinshasa on 21 August.

Source: Euronews