D-8 Cooperation on Civil Aviation; Halil Tokel

Halil Tokel:  Thanks for your comments and questions. About a month and a half ago D-8 Civil Aviation Committee had a meeting with civil aviation authorities of the eight countries and we participated  as  Turkish Airlines Technics division. I made a presentation there. During that presentation I had three suggestions.

The first of these proposals is that the eight authorities should be merged as single authority, the same as in Europe, the aeronautical authority. As a start, let’s THY Technics coordinate D-8 civil aviation committee in Istanbul. So a year later it shuld be transferred to Iran. We alltogetre come with a solution model and that eight civil aviation committees speak the same language with the same common words. If one confirms something, the others will automatically approve. This study will be resulted hopefully.

Second, let’s coordinate the eight countries’ aviation industries. Nobody is demanding and there are no suggestions. I said, let us take over as Turkish Airlines Technics.  We will coordinate the associations, institutions, public unis there  and  we will organize the processes  maybe the fair organizations and  we will go and they will come. Perhaps we will see a product we need. They will see our products here. At least two companies will set up a company  and will invest. We need to provide this opportunity.

One of our third recommendations was to bring the aircraft maintenance companies of these eight countries under an umbrella. And they support each other, parts needs, aircraft maintenance needs will be procured with priority. There was an Association proposal which was accepted. We will coordinate the Association.

After achieving all of these proposals one further step is participation in  Turkey’s big projects  with selected members like Pakistan,  Indonesia, Turkey and Malaysia. We can participate in their projects. For example, we can initiate  a new passenger plane project with a capacity of 150 passengers. It may be thought of a standing committee where these issues will be discussed for a continuous exchange of views and ideas.  We can do this on the TAI side. TAI also may take responsibility in this regard.  For example, in Uzbekistan, there is a passenger plane factory in Tashkent. All the passenger aircraft of the Russians were built there. This is also on account of our opportunity.

Levent Ağaoğlu: The plane of Indonesia does not have a flight license in the world, it is flying in Indonesia only. May it fly in Turkey as well?

Halil Tokel:  Definitely flies.

Levent Ağaoğlu:  The seats are very expensive  with our existing aircrafts  and if it  is cheaper with Indonesian small aircraft we may use themfor domestic flights and sell THY’s big planes abroad? Can we not sell them abroad?

Halil Tokel: What Turkey is lacking are the type of regional aircrafts. Our lowest aircraft passenger capacity number is 150, but we also need a passenger airplane for 19 people,  for 40 people, we even need for 11 people. We need a 70-seat plane as well. These are abvailable in other countries. Now we are trying to produce regional planes. Indonesia has produced and w emay buy them  from Indonesia who is our brother.

Levent Ağaoğlu: We can visualize D 8 in that way. Like The Common Trade Union, like The Common Customs Union, like Common Aviation Union.

Halil Tokel: You said something very nice  that the eight countries move to single currency. That would be fantastic. But we can codify the rules in aviation between the members of D-8 if we can organize the companies with the same functions under single roof.

Source: ASAM Conference by Halil Tokel (Technical Advisor of THY and TAI) on 17,02,2018  in Istanbul