Airbus came out of the Dubai Air Show clearly not as satisfied as Boeing. However we now have the announcement and the full details of the massive new Airbus aircraft order placed by Turkish Airlines. Let’s take a closer look.
In this post:
- Turkish Airlines December 2023 Airbus Order Details
- Jets To Fuel Turkish’s Huge Ambitions
- Huge Vote of Confidence in the Airbus A350 Project
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The Turkish Airlines Airbus Order Details
It came a little late, but better late than never I’m sure is the dominant feeling in Airbus HQ right now.
Turkish has placed a massive order for both narrow and wide body planes with the European plane manufacturer.
A whopping extra 220 airplane are now in the Airbus order book. 150 of those 220 are narrow body jets while the remaining 70 are wide bodies.
Specifically the Turkish order of December 2023 is for:
- 150 Airbus A321neo
- 50 Airbus A350-900
- 15 Airbus A350-1000
- 5 Airbus A350F
This huge 220 plane new order, adds to the already standing ones to bring the grand total of Turkish Airlines’ order backlog with Airbus to 504 units.
Jets To Fuel Turkish’s Huge Ambitions
The new order will mainly see the new planes joining the carrier to expand current operations. The airline has stated in a very ambitious way, time and time again that it intends to massively increase the number of passengers carried.
To do so they will need to have an even stronger presence in the European and Middle Eastern medium to short haul market funneling passenger onto long range services to all corners of the globe.
In order to do so THY will need to add to its fleet an incredible amount of planes in coming years, setting aside the planes that will need to be replaced.
The new A321neo planes will help the airline increase frequencies to strategic destinations in both Europe and the Middle East, where competition will only increase in coming years with the launch of new premium airlines such as Riyadh Air.
The A350s are key to boosting international to international capacity. Turkish is a huge player in this line of business but still has much ground to make up on the mega-connectors such as Emirates and Qatar Airways.
Huge Vote of Confidence in the Airbus A350 Project
What noteworthy of this order is the fact that Turkish Airlines has decided differently to Emirates to order the larger A350-1000 variant.
I’m curious to see when the airliner joins the Turkish fleet if it’ll become a viable alternative to the Boeing 777 on many services and if somehow it’ll prove EK wrong or regret ordering this plane.
Because the first deliveries are quite far out in the future the case might be simply that THY hopes all creases in engine performance will be ironed out by then. Only time will tell.