While airlines across the globe continue to recover post-pandemic, Turkish Airlines managed to break the occupancy record by carrying more than 260,000 passengers in a day on 15 July.
Turkish Airlines’ busiest day in its history
Turkish Airlines, also known as Türkiye Hava Yolları, has made an impressive recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago as the carrier’s traffic is following a stronger than normal recovery trend.
Such passenger traffic has accumulated into the eventual 260,000 passengers carried by Türkiye’s carrier last Friday.
The impressive number has a huge occupancy rate of over 87% with a total of 1,543 flights operated, all for a total of 600,944,060 Available Seat Kilometers (ASKs).
The exceptional total of 260,000 passengers carried last Friday is also a 12% increase in capacity compared to the same period in 2019 (12 July).
According to OAG, a UK-based global travel data provider, Turkish Airlines deployed its airline capacity in the following manner – 176,914 seats were on international flights and 62,322 seats were on domestic flights.
The most domestic capacity was on the Istanbul to the resort city of Antalya route with 2,979 seats. For international services, Antalya to Moscow featured the highest number of seats (2,612 to be exact).
When comparing figures from 2019, it becomes increasingly clear that the Star Alliance airline has been increasing capacity compared to the pre-pandemic years.
In 2019, the Istanbul to Ankara service still offered the most seats but with a total of 2,749. For international services, Tel Aviv to Istanbul was the most popular (with 1,808) as opposed to Antalya to Moscow this year.
How is this possible?
You might be thinking – how are Turkish Airlines able to carry so many passengers in a day? Well, the carrier has a massive fleet at its disposal.
According to Cirium, the carrier currently operates a fleet of 337 aircraft. 184 from European aerospace manufacturer Airbus and the remaining 153 from the U.S’ Boeing.
317 aircraft are used for commercial operations and the remaining 20 are exclusively for cargo operations.
Such a large capable fleet of aircraft enables Turkish Airlines to also offer the highest number of destinations in the world – a whopping 274 destinations covering 6 regions – making the carrier the largest mainline carrier in the world by the number of destinations.
Turkish Airlines is dominating the field right now with its impressive passenger stats without delays and disruption. Did you fly with the Istanbul-based carrier last Friday?
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