12 May 2010 / TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
Turkish Airlines (THY), Turkey’s national flag carrier, posted a 21 percent increase in passenger numbers in the January-April period over the same period of last year, serving 8.4 million passengers within the first four months of 2010.
In a statement released through the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP) of the İstanbul Stock Exchange (İMKB) on Tuesday, THY presented figures on its performance in the first four months of the year. According to the statement, THY increased its number of passengers from 6.9 million in the January-April period of 2009 to 8.4 million for the same period of this year.During the same period passengers flying business class to international destinations increased by 32 percent, and flights arriving from and departing to cities outside Turkey increased by 29.6 percent. Occupancy rates also rose by 4 percentage points to 71 percent in the first four months of the year. The available seat kilometers (ASK), a measure of an airline’s passenger-carrying capacity, grew by 22.7 percent, from 15.9 billion to 19.5 billion. The number of flights increased by 18 percent to 72,720 in the January-April period over that of a year ago, and the amount of freight carried also increased by 50.4 percent, reaching 98,744 tons in comparison to the same months of last year.
