Turkish Airlines receives new plane, expanding its fleet

ISTANBUL

Turkish Airlines has received a new airplane, expanding its fleet, Bilal Ekşi, the CEO of the flag carrier has announced.

The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner joined the company’s fleet on Dec. 31.

“In 2003, we had 65 airplanes. Now we are entering 2023 with 393 airplanes,” Ekşi wrote on Twitter.

Last month, Ekşi said that the carrier plans to hire 2,600 new cabin crew members and 1,200 pilots in 2023 and that the company targets more than 10 percent growth this year.

He noted that Turkish Airlines ranked 35th in the world in the terms of the fleet size in 2003.

In the first eleven months of 2022, Turkish Airlines carried a total of 66.3 million passengers, 3.7 percent lower than the travelers the company served in the same period of 2019.

The international passenger tally grew 5.6 percent compared with January-November 2019 to 42.7 million people, while domestic passengers fell 17 percent to around 24 million.

The carrier boosted its seat capacity from 68,321 to 79,595.

In November alone, the number of total passengers inched up 0.2 percent from the same month of 2019 to 5.75 million with international passengers rising 8.2 percent to 3.69 million. Domestic passengers the company carried fell by 11.5 percent to 2.06 million.

Total revenues of Turkish Airlines soared 37 percent in the first nine months of 2022 from the same period of 2019 to reach $13.65 billion, with net operating profit rising 369 percent to $2.1 billion. The company’s net income grew more than 398 percent to $2.52 billion in January-September 2022.