adminTurkish airline,” THY chairman Hamdi Topcu said during a ceremony with Airbus in Istanbul.
The order centres on Airbus’ A320 medium-haul family and includes firm orders for 82 planes and an option for 35 others, to be delivered by 2020.
THY currently has a fleet of 215 airplanes, 107 of them purchased from the European giant and the rest from its US rival Boeing.
With the new order, the THY expects to be operating a 375-plane fleet by 2020, hoping to become “one of the 10 largest airlines in the world and carry 90 million passengers a year”, according to Topcu.
“Today we celebrate a great achievement for Airbus and Turkish Airlines,” Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier told reporters ahead of the ceremony.
Bregier praised THY’s growth, which he said was faster than Airbus.
Starting off as a monopoly, THY was privatised 10 years ago, which Turkish finance minister Mehmet Simsek said “put the company on a rational footing that allowed this extensive growth”.— AFP.
Online Reporter
Peter Tanyanyiwa