Turkish Airlines has announced that it now ranks number one in the world in terms of destination countries, a claim it shared during its H1 2023 results presentation.
In total, as of August 3, 2023, Turkish Airlines flies to 291 international destinations in 128 different countries, 516 destinations with codeshare agreements. In the past few years, the Turkish carrier added four destinations in the Americas, five in Europe, two in the Middle East, three in Africa, and seven in the Far East and Asia.
Its network should continue to grow, with Turkish Airlines revealing that it plans to add routes to more than a dozen destinations in the near-term future. This includes its planned expansion to serve Sydney Airport (SYD) and Melbourne Airport (MEL) in Australia.
Overall, the airline earned $9.5 billion in revenue in H1 2023, resulting in a net income of $868 million. Capacity, measured in Available Seat Kilometers (ASK), grew by 22.3% to 110.8 billion, with an average load factor of 81.5%.
If Turkish Airlines were to exclude one-off impact items, its profitability would be higher by $370 million, the airline noted.
It carried a total of 38.7 million passengers during the first six months of the year, split between 24.5 million international and 14.2 million domestic travelers. In H1 2022, Turkish Airlines welcomed 30.9 million passengers (19.3 million international, 11.6 million domestic).
36% of those international passengers in H1 2023 flew on international-to-international transferring connections (32% in H1 2022).
Turkish Airlines’ costs grew by 25.1% between H1 2022 and H1 2023, largely driven by personnel-related costs, which rose 74.1% between the two periods. Fuel, which comprises 32.9% of the airline’s total costs, rose by only 2.6%, resulting in a fuel bill of $2.8 billion.
