Tunç Bey
Anadolu Agency aviation reporter 2016-2023. Now freelance, writes part-time about Turkish Airlines hub politics and Middle East transit.
Tunç spent seven years on the aviation desk at Anadolu Agency in Istanbul, covering Turkish Airlines as a primary beat through one of the more dramatic decades in the airline’s history: the move to the new airport in 2019, the pandemic, the wide-body expansion, the geopolitical knot that keeps rerouting fifth-freedom traffic. He went independent in 2023.
He writes for airport.flights as a paid freelance contributor, one to two pieces a month focused on the Eastern Mediterranean and Gulf transit corridor, Turkish Airlines as both a network and a political instrument, and the operational realities of hubs that handle as much widebody traffic as IST does on a normal Tuesday. His beat is the structural view of the Middle East transit network.
He lives in Beşiktaş, flies IST whenever he can, and tells anyone who’ll listen that SAW is, in honesty, the more pleasant Istanbul airport for anyone whose travel doesn’t require the new hub’s connection density.