Turkish Airlines

Turkish Airlines (Turkish Türk Hava Yolları) (THY) is the national airline of Turkey based in Istanbul. It operates a network of scheduled services to Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, North Africa, South Africa and the United States. The airline's main base is Atatürk International Airport (IST), Istanbul, with secondary hubs at Esenboga International Airport (ESB), Ankara, and Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (SAW), Istanbul.

History

The airline was established on May 20, 1933, as the State Airlines Administration - Hava Yolları Devlet Işletmesi Idaresi. It began operations with an Istanbul, Eskisehir, Ankara service in August 1933. The name was changed to Devlet Hava Yolları Umum Müdürlüğü (DHY) in June 1938. The first international flight was launched in 1947 to Athens but it was another 40 years before the introduction of long-haul flights to the Far East and across the Atlantic.

In a major reorganisation the state company DHY was replaced with a mixed corporation, Türk Hava Yolları AO (THY) on 20 February 1956. The airline's shares were passed to the prime ministry public participation administration in 1990 and about 24.8% of the shares were sold to the public. The airline is owned by TC Privatisation Administration (75.2%) and private shareholders (24.8%). The airline has around 12,000 employees. It also has a 50% holding in affiliated airline SunExpress, the other half of which owned by Thomas Cook of Germany.

Destinations

Main article: Turkish Airlines destinations

New Routes

It inaugurates a nonstop services on May 2006, as follows :

Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen-Van (Turkey): daily service is operated with a Boeing737-400 and is in addition to daily B737-800 service operated from Istanbul's Ataturk .
Istanbul-Minsk: 2 flights a week, on Mon/Thursday, using an Airbus 320.
Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen-Hannover on June 2006 : 2 flights a week dep Istanbul on Mon/Thursday and Hannover on Tue/Friday operated with a Boeing 737-800. This service is in addition to 8 weekly B737-800 flights from Istanbul's Ataturk increasing to 13 in July 2006.
Istanbul-Lagos on June 2006 : 2 flights a week, on Thu/Saturday, using an Airbus 310-300.

Major Incidents and Accidents

During its 72 year history, Turkish Airlines had only one accident on its international flights, and a few on the domestic. The most disastrous was Turkish Airlines Flight 981, that crashed in France on 3 March 1974 due to explosive decompression, killing all 346 passengers aboard. Before the Tenerife disaster, it was the worst aircraft disaster.

Fleet

# of aircraft	Aircraft type	Passenger capacity	Max operating range (km)
7	Airbus A340-311/313	271	11,952
4	Airbus A330-200	250	12,000
7	Airbus A321-111/231/211	155 / 186 / 195 / 202	2,250 / 3,200
14	Airbus A320-214/232	150 / 156 / 167 / 168	3,350
2	Airbus A319-132		3,900
7	Airbus A310-304	208 / 210	8,100 / 8,980
38	Boeing 737-800	165	4,755
17	Boeing 737-400	148 / 150 / 152	3,350
2	BAE Avro RJ100 ER	99	2,259

The fleet is under a major expansion with the purchase of 59 new planes (Boeing and Airbus) which will be delivered gradually until 2008.

Total fleet as for August 2006 is 98 airplanes.

The average age of Turkish Airlines fleet is 9.2 years old in April 2006.