Turkish Airlines says passenger numbers rise 6.1 percent

ISTANBUL

Turkish Airlines, Europe’s fourth-largest carrier, said on March 17 its passenger numbers have increased 6.1 percent to 8.3 million in the first two months of the year.

Its load factor dropped by 1.1 percentage points to 76.2 percent, the national carrier also said in written statement to the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP).

According to the statement by Turkish Airlines, the airline witnessed a 5.6 percent increase in the number of passengers on domestic routes and a 6.4 increase of passengers on international flights in the first two months of the year, compared to the same period last year.

The number of cities from/to which the company has flights increased to 261 by the end of February 2015 from 243 by the end of the same month of last year.

The number of airplanes was announced as 263 by the end of February 2015.

The available seat kilometers performance – a measure of an airline flight’s passenger carrying capacity – increased by 8.3 percent to 21.4 billion in the January-February period of 2015 compared to the same period of last year.