As demand for air travel continues to rise post-pandemic, Turkish Airlines is close to ordering 30 aircraft to operate regional routes to keep up with pent-up demand.
Scaling up
Turkish Airlines is looking to order 30 aircraft to join its fleet. In 2019 İlker Aycı, chairman of Turkish Airlines at the time, said that the carrier was interested in both the Airbus A220 and the Embraer 195-E2.
Turkey’s flag carrier also has an additional 90-passenger aircraft on order.
Now, three years later, the airline has opted for the Airbus A220-300 on the basis of the efficient combination of lower operating costs and longer range.
The A220-300 can carry up to 160 passengers with a range of up to 5,920 miles. A significant number of the destinations Turkish Airlines serves are within the range of the A220-300, with parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa in reach too.
The new 30 aircraft will join the carrier’s fleet made up of 354 passenger aircraft that is mainly made up of Airbus aircraft – the A319-100, A320-200, A321-200, A321neo, A330-200, A330-300, A350-900. With a total of 172 passenger Airbus aircraft in service – Turkish Airlines is clearly a fan of the European aerospace manufacturer’s work and felt comfortable enough when it came to ordering more aircraft to choose the manufacturers A220-300 spec.
Elsewhere, Turkish Airlines has rebranded as Türkiye Hava Yolları following the announcement that the country itself shall be known as Türkiye from now on.
The changes are motivated by a desire to start referring to the country as its traditional name, rather than the anglicised equivalent that provides a different translation. NATO and the UN have officially adopted the change.
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