Chairman of the Board & Executive Committee of Turkish Airlines, Ahmet BOLAT, made a presentation at the 79th IATA Annual General Meeting (AGM) and World Air Transport Summit held in İstanbul on June 5. In his speech, BOLAT shared information about Turkish Airlines’ next 10 years strategy, future fleet size, and planned new destinations.

Last year, Turkish Airlines (THY) announced a record high profit in the history of the company. According to BOLAT, THY’s first quarter (2023) results showed that the Türkiye’s flag carrier airline going to have similar results this year also. The total revenue increased was 42.7%, compared to the first quarter of the last year after the pandemic. Also, the net profit increased by 45% compared to last year. In the same period, THY secured US$230 Million, which was the highest first quarter profit in the company’s history.

Stating that Turkish Airlines will increase its fleet size to around 800 aircraft in the next 10 years, Chairman of the Board & Executive Committee of Turkish Airlines, Ahmet BOLAT emphasized that the total contribution of Turkish Airlines to the Turkish economy is expected to be US$140 Billion by 2033. BOLAT said: “After hearing this little brief about our financial results, I’d like to talk about what we'll do for the next 10 years. According to our next 10 years strategy, the Turkish Airlines fleet size will increase to 800 aircraft, actually 830. We are going to have 830, so what we need to reach around 600 aircraft, we have talked with Airbus and Boeing the main providers to the whole aviation industry. We are basically talking about around 400 MAX and NEO aircraft, 200 wide-bodies, mainly 787s and 350s. We are also looking around 25-30 777X or A350 XWB. These are the combinations we are considering, and we are also talking with the engine providers for this fleet. The presidential election took a little longer than expected. In fact, we were very close to make a deal with one of the manufacturers but to be fair to the other manufacturer we are going to delay around two months to announce our final decision. We will not rush. We'll have a separate event in İstanbul to announce for such a big order in the next two months.

As Turkish Airlines, our goal is to contribute to the country US$50 Billion revenue in 2033. With the ecosystems and other contributions, total contribution of Turkish Airlines to the Turkish economy will be US$140 Billion, which will be equal to the 59^th largest economy in the world. If you compare the figure this year, we are doubling the size of Turkish with the contribution almost 2.8 times.”

BOLAT stated they will begin additional promotional activities to increase the number of the number of tourists visiting Türkiye. In this regard, THY will hold several organizations at the US, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. THY will also increase its destinations by adding Detroit and Melbourne before the end of this year, BOLAT stated. “Turkish Airlines is the main body of the Turkish Services Exporters' Association. Last year, around 50 million guests visited Türkiye. Half of them was carried by Turkish Airlines and this year our expectation is 60 million tourists will come to Türkiye. Immediately after the earthquake, the numbers declined but now we see that there is a big improvement. We had three organizations in the US to double the number of tourists to come to Türkiye. Our goal is 2 million. Last year 1 million Americans visited Türkiye.

Similarly, we will have more promotional activities in Asia. Next month we have an organization in Japan, Korea and also Singapore. Also, we will visit Melbourne because we are planning to fly to the Sydney and Melbourne before the year is over and for that reason, we're going to have first activity in Melbourne probably later in Sydney. So, before the year is over, we will have one stop flight from Singapore to one of the great cities of Australia. In November this year, we are going to fly to Detroit. This will increase our destinations to 345 and when will fly to Australia the number of countries will increase to 130.”

Chairman of the Board & Executive Committee of Turkish Airlines, Ahmet BOLAT ended his speech stating that Turkish Airlines aims to first airline in the world providing free of charge wireless Internet access to not only domestic but also international routes. BOLAT also shared their year-end targets for 2023. BOLAT said: “We're also going to improve customer experiences. I’m really glad to hear that most of the passengers, most of our guests in this event travelled by Turkish Airlines and most of them were very happy with the services that we provided. But we're going to further improve the service quality. Very soon we're going to offer free of charge wireless Internet access to all our passengers, both business and economy. We are having discussions with the providers now. So, very soon we will be the first airline in the world providing free of charge wireless Internet access to not only domestic but also international routes. Also, our goal is to make Turkish Airlines one of the top three global airlines providing the best digital experiences.

What is our expectation for end of 2023. The number of aircraft will be 435, Available Seat Kilometer will be US$235 Billion, which is almost 20 percent higher than 2022. We're going to carry more than 86 million passengers and total revenue will be over US$19 Billion, and the number of employees will be around 82,000.”