Turkish Airlines completed its maiden flight from Istanbul to Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine with some 320,000 residents, on Oct. 15 expanding the number of Ukrainian destinations to seven.
The scheduled flight frequency between two cities is
four times per week.
Greeting the commercial airliner were Kherson Governor Andriy Putilov,
Turkish Ambassador Yonet Can Tezel, and Turkish Airlines chief of marketing and
sales Ziya Taskent.
Turkish Airlines has been doing business in Ukraine since 1993, and conducts daily flights between Istanbul and Kyiv, while routes to Lviv take
place three times a week. Moreover, the transportation services provider has
a codeshare agreement with Ukraine International Airlines. It used to have one
also with AeroSvit, but cancelled it in early 2013 when AeroSvit went bankrupt.
The company covers 260 destinations in 108 countries and has a fleet of 265
aircraft, mostly Airbuses and Boeing airliners. Its 2013 net profit was $307.7 million, down
by 40 percent year-on-year.
Being initially set up as a domestic carrier, the airline commenced
international services with the Ankara – Istanbul – Athens flights
in 1947. The company has become one of the world’s fastest-growing carriers and has been at the forefront of trying to establish Istanbul as a hub travel between Europe and the U.S. and
Asia, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier this month, Turkish Airlines cut its forecast for passenger numbers
this year to 55.6 million from 59.5 million because of lower-than-expected
demand at its domestic brand AnadoluJet.
“The
expectations for 2014 are related to changes in fleet plans and revisions in
capacity management because of the domestic airline AnadoluJet,”
Istanbul-based Turkish Airlines, formally known as Turk Hava Yollari AO, said
on Oct. 10.
The revised
forecasts will not affect the carrier’s earlier guidance of $11.4 billion of
sales for the year, and its profitability, it said.
