Turkish Airlines continued its recovery by producing another profitable quarter, turning last year’s HY1 net loss into a solid profit. The carrier reported a $737 million net profit for January-June compared to $-1 million in the same period last year. Turkish Airlines continues recovery with HY1 profit.
The operating profit was $786 million, up from $146 million. EBITDA was $1.671 billion versus $988 million. Net cash from operating activities was $3.4 billion, but from investing activities $-1.3 billion. Expenses or costs of sales increased to $6.137 billion from $$3.450 billion, with fuel the biggest factor at $2.779 billion, up from $981 million. Total revenues were $7.586 billion, of which $5.365 billion came from passengers versus $2.060 billion last year.
Cargo revenues increased by sixteen percent to $2.044 billion from $1.765 billion as Turkish continued to grow its market share. It was very active in transporting Covid vaccines across the world, carrying 335 million doses to 61 countries.
For Q2, Türk Hava Yollari as the airline is also known, reported a $576 million net profit and an operating profit of $520 million. Total revenues ended at $4.535 billion, of which $3.375 billion was from passengers and $1.064 billion from cargo. By comparison: Turkish reported a $161 million net profit in Q1 thanks to increased capacity.
In HY1, Turkish carried 31 million passengers, which is 88 percent of 2019 levels, and 18.3 million in Q2. The airline says it is the only network carrier to have surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Capacity in available seat kilometers stood at 90.6 million for HY1, up 2.1 percent from 2019. In the second quarter, ASKs were up by even 12.3 percent over 2019 to 51.8 million. The only markets where ASKs were lower compared to 2019 were the Turkish domestic market (-15.9 percent in HY1), the Far East (-19.1 percent), and the Middle East (-22.1). The Americas saw the biggest jump in capacity at +65.8 percent. The load factor on international flights was 74.2 percent.
Russia remains important market
After Russia started the war in Ukraine on February 24, Turkish stopped services to Ukraine and Belarus, but it continues to serve Russia as its airspace remained open to Turkish carriers. However, it often used longer western routes over Central Europe to Moscow instead of the shorter ones along the eastern borders of Ukraine. Turkish doesn’t specify how it benefitted from being one of the few western airlines that served Russia, but the country has run various campaigns to attract Russian travelers to come to Turkey.
There is another link between Turkish Airlines and Russia as the carrier has purchased six Airbus A350-900s that were originally ordered by Aeroflot but can’t be delivered due to the western sanctions on Russia. The first has been delivered in July, with the other five joining later this year and in 2023. By the end of June, the fleet totaled 380 aircraft, of which 106 are widebodies, 254 narrowbodies, and twenty full freighters. In Q2, Turkish took delivery of one Airbus A321neo, two A350-900s, and six Boeing MAX 8s. The MAX’ are all leased from BOC Aviation, but the seventh and final aircraft has been delivered on August 1.
Turkish Airlines continues to expand its network and announced new routes to Montenegro, Italy, Uzbekistan, South Sudan, and the US during the second quarter. More routes are planned but depend on aircraft availability and market conditions to Russia, Poland, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Somalia, plus the US (Denver and Detroit). The airline currently serves 129 countries.
In its financial reports, Turkish Airlines isn’t giving guidance for the rest of 2022. It says it has hedged fuel at thirty percent for HY2 and for now at five percent in 2023.
