Turkish Airlines opens four new routes in 2020
According to the Chairman of Turkey’s flag carrier, Turkish Airlines is scheduled to expand its fleets as it opens new routes this year. The company already finished in 2019 all the needed procedures to launch its new flights namely to Tokyo Haneda’s Airport, Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, Newark, New Jersey, and Vancouver, Canada. To date, they are just waiting for the necessary permits to come out. Aside from offering flights to new destinations, Turkish Airlines will also focus on frequency depth. It starts servicing to 10 new international routes in 2019 and even reached a total of 318 cities in 126 countries.
The biggest switch for Turkish Airlines in 2019 is being able to move from Ataturk Airport to a new mega Istanbul Airport. To achieve its goal without interruptions, the company has a strong infrastructure and well-supported and backed up with its growth. Istanbul Airport, the so-called world’s new hub, recently opened on October 29, 2018, which was also the 95th founding anniversary of the Turkish Republic.
It has a full annual capacity of 200 million passengers. In 2028, it will have a total of six runways which sets Istanbul Airport to be one of the global aviation hubs to bring in more than 100 airline companies and flights to approximately 300 destinations around the globe.
Before Ataturk Airlines can’t respond to Turkish Airlines’ need for more capacity and slots due to runway insufficiency but now, thanks to Istanbul Airport., it has a larger operational space. The third runway is expected to go live in 2020 and with that, it will be possible to do an aircraft landing and even takeoff every 43 seconds, approximately 2,000 planes a day.
Turkish Airlines continues to expand its fleet and will also be replacing its fleet older models. In 2019, it has a total of 351 aircraft composing of 229 narrow body, 98 wide-bodies, and 24 cargo planes. If we were to base on its fleet size, the carrier ranks 10th among the passengers’ airlines worldwide. This year, there will be an additional 20 fleet for this airline and they are open for rental options.
There’s an on-going grounding of the Boeing 737 Max and the delay of the delivery of A321 Neo, it’s good to know that Turkish Airlines still posted a 2.7 percent increase in its capacity in January to November 2019. Until now, they were unable to make use of its 12 aircraft and even the delayed delivery of the 12 new A321 aircraft.