Turkish Airlines (TK, Istanbul Airport) has deferred the delivery of 167 Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) and Boeing (BOE, Washington National) aircraft as it deals with weaker demand for travel to Turkey in the wake of regional conflicts as well as domestic political instability.
The deferral includes ninety-two A321neos, sixty-five B737 MAX 8s, and ten B737 MAX 9s, which were due for delivery between 2018 and 2022, Turkish said in a statement.
The airline will now take up ten out of the thirty-four aircraft planned for 2018, thirty-five instead of forty jets in 2019 and forty-two of the fifty-two twinjets initially planned for delivery in 2020. There will be no changes to the arrival of new aircraft in 2021, while the carrier will take a further six in 2022, down from thirty, and an additional fifteen jets in 2023.
Other operators that have registered a similar downturn in demand include AnadoluJet (Ankara Esenboga) which recently scrapped a wet-lease agreement with BoraJet Airlines (Istanbul Sabiha Gökcen) involving three E195s. SunExpress (XQ, Antalya) also abandoned plans to lease in four B737-800s from GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes (G3, São Paulo Congonhas) this summer while redeploying several jets to its SunExpress Deutschland (Frankfurt International) unit. Earlier this month Pegasus Airlines (PC, Istanbul Sabiha Gökcen) put three of its A320 and B737-800 fleet up for lease.
The increasingly difficult market has also impacted Turkish Airlines' bottom line with it recording a USD644 million loss for the first half of the year.
