Cargo revenue helps push Turkish Airlines to first-quarter profit

Turkish Airlines posted another profitable first quarter as its revenue climbed almost 10% thanks partly to a sharp jump in cargo sales. While the Star Alliance carrier posted a slightly reduced net profit of $226m for the first three months of the year – and profits from its main operations more than halved to $42m – it marks another profitable quarter for an airline that has been in the black at an operating level since Q2 2021. Turkish Airlines’ revenue climbed 9.6% to $4.77b during the first quarter. Notably, given the challenging global market for air cargo, that was driven by a 27% jump in freight revenue, to $750m. The carrier attributes the improvement to strong e-commerce activity. By contrast, its revenue from passengers increased less than 5% year on year in the first quarter, even though the airline carried 8% more passengers (18.5m total). Turkish Airlines’ first quarter passenger revenue per available seat kilometre (RASM) declined 7% year on year, though its RASM excluding the impact of currency value changes declined less than 3% year on year.<br/>