Turkish Airlines, Boeing and Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Turkey’s leading aerospace engineering and technology institution, have welcomed a new batch of students for its Air Transport Management course.

The two-year master’s programme will equip Turkish Airlines future executives with the skills needed to deal with country’s rapidly growing aviation industry.

The master’s programme also has academic partnerships with Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, Cranfield University in the UK and the University of British Columbia in Canada.

In 2013, the first class started with forty executive candidates from Turkish Airlines. The participants of the programme were trained in the fundamentals of airline management, aviation economics, air law and compliance management, while they chose modules on topics such as airport planning and future technologies for air transportation systems. At the end of the programme, graduation projects focused on solving real-life issues facing airline managers.

“As Turkish Airlines, we are proud to contribute to furthering international integration by building bridges between continents and by also providing outstanding contributions towards developing cultural, commercial and economic relations. We have made significant progress in the investment plan that we have pursued in the past 10 years. We have seen a constant growth in the number of destinations, fleet and passengers; all while also achieving profitability,” said Dr Temel Kotil, chief executive officer (CEO) of Turkish Airlines.

“Our goal was to capture an important share of the traffic passing over us and we developed appropriate strategies for this aim. To continue to build on our success, I believe that this programme - which has improved the efficiency in management skills of our executive candidates who attended this programme’s first education period - will continue to add significantly to Turkey’s future aviation leader’s occupational capabilities, as we continue to implement our long-term goals,” Dr Kotil said.

“Our talented team has decades of knowledge and experience to share,” said Fariba Alamdari, vice president of Marketing, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “Through collaboration and partnerships like this, we can support the future Turkish airline leaders to further develop and strengthen the country’s aviation industry.” – TradeArabia News Service