Turkish Cargo saw revenues and volumes decline last year on the back of lower airfreight rates and a weaker air cargo market.
The Istanbul-hubbed carrier saw cargo revenues decline by 30% year on year in 2023 to $2.6bn, while cargo volumes fell by 1.2% to 1.7m tons.
The declines reflect overall market conditions as volumes for the year are estimated by IATA to have fallen by around 3.7% and yields were down by just over 30%.
Turkish Cargo pointed out that volumes were also in the first part of the year affected by the devastating earthquake that hit the country in February.
Source: Turkish Airlines
The airline pointed out that volume performance improved as the year progressed and in the final quarter of the year demand increased by 12% – the first quarterly improvement registered since 2021.
It added that cargo ton kms were up 16% compared with 2019 due to fleet expansion.
Meanwhile, the cargo revenue decline slowed to 3% in the fourth quarter.
“Tripling its market share in airfreight market in the last 10 years, our company bolstered its success by ranking fourth among the world’s top air cargo carriers according to IATA’s 2023 data,” the company said.
Turkish Cargo’s share of overall revenues also normalised during the year, returning to 12.4% from 20.3% last year. In pre-Covid 2019 the figure stood at 12.8%.
In terms of freighter fleet, the carrier added three unspecified wet-leased aircraft last year to bring its freighter fleet to 24 aircraft: 10 x A330Fs, 8 x B77Fs and 6 x unspecified leased aircraft.
Turkish Cargo eyes a fleet of 40 freighters
