The investigation to establish whether Turkish Airlines (THY) violated article 6 of the Act no 4054 by means of exclusionary conduct against its competitor on international and domestic airline passenger transportation routes from Istanbul was concluded.

The investigation started after Ankara 11th Administrative Court annulled the Board decision dated 30.12.2011 and numbered 11-65/1692-599 concerning the same issue. In the annulled decision, the Board concluded with respect to the claims that, it was not possible to establish an infringement within the scope of article 6; therefore, it was not necessary to impose administrative fines on the undertaking in question according to article 16 of the same Act. Moreover, the Board deemed it necessary to send an opinion about issues such as slot allocation and international bilateral aviation agreements to the relevant undertakings and public agencies and institutions in order to ensure a sound competitive environment.

Upon the abovementioned decision, the complainant filed a suit before Ankara 11th Administrative Court with the number 2012/1727. The Court decided on 11.07.2013 with the number 2013/1083 K. to annul the said Board decision. The Court indicated in its decision the following issues as the annulment reasons: making an assessment about whether THY carried out conduct that could be considered as abuse of dominant position without determining whether THY held a dominant position was irrelevant, whether flights from Sabiha Gökçen Airport and flights from Atatürk Airport could be substitutes for each other was not established, if this was the case to what extent they were substitutes was not stated and the pricing policies of Pegasus Hava Taşımacılığı A.Ş. (Pegasus) before and after THY started to operate in Sabiha Gökçen Airport was not analyzed.

Within the scope of the investigation initiated by the Competition Board on 13.08.2014 as a requirement of the said Court decision, whether flights at Sabiha Gökçen Airport and Atatürk Airport were substitutes was analyzed within the framework of the market definition; an evaluation was made about whether THY was dominant on domestic and international routes from Istanbul where the activities of THY and Pegasus overlap; whether THY abused its dominant position by means of pricing on the routes where THY was found dominant depending on the detailed cost, income and efficiency analyses. Moreover, the investigation examined whether THY carried out practices other than pricing in order to exclude its competitors from the market.

As a result of the discussion of the contents of the investigation file by the Competition Board on 25.12.2014, it was decided unanimously that it was not possible to consider that the activities of THY that were the subject matter of the claim as abuse of dominant position within the scope of article 6 of the Act no 4054 on the Protection of Competition; thus, it was not necessary to impose administrative fines.

Click here for the text of the pronouncement (in Turkish) dated 25.12.2014 and numbered 14-54/932-420, the reasoned decision for which will be notified later and which can be appealed before Ankara Administrative Courts.