Turkish Airlines receives new plane, expanding its fleet

Turkish Airlines has received a new airplane, expanding its fleet, Bilal Ekşi, the CEO of the flag carrier has announced. The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner joined the company’s fleet on Dec. 31. “In 2003, we had 65 airplanes. Now we are entering 2023 with 393 airplanes,” Ekşi wrote on Twitter. Last month, Ekşi said that the carrier plans to hire 2,600 new cabin crew members and 1,200 pilots in 2023 and that the company targets more than 10% growth this year. He noted that Turkish Airlines ranked 35th in the world in the terms of the fleet size in 2003. In the first eleven months of 2022, Turkish Airlines carried a total of 66.3m passengers, 3.7% lower than the travelers the company served in the same period of 2019. The international passenger tally grew 5.6% compared with January-November 2019 to 42.7m people, while domestic passengers fell 17% to around 24m.<br/>