Turkish Airlines low-cost unit AJet lifted from four to a dozen the number of back-up aircraft it is deploying, and the airline is adding more buffer to its operations as part of efforts to bolster on-time performance.
The low-cost carrier, the former Anadolu Jet which relaunched as a separate unit under the AJet brand earlier this year, saw a decline in its on-time performance towards the end of the second quarter due to what Turkish Airlines calls “several extraordinary circumstances”.
That includes the impact of ongoing aircraft delivery delays on its plans to renew its fleet ahead of the key summer season, meaning it was operating more older aircraft than originally planned. It was also hit by the ongoing inspections impacting Pratt & Whitney PW1100G geared turbofan-powered Airbus A320neos, including the earlier than scheduled grounding of five aircraft.
Speaking during a second-quarter earnings call on 6 August, Turkish Airlines chief financial officer Murat Seker said that despite AJet’s challenges, its operational performance had been ”quite comparable, and even better, than the industry”– citing an on-time performance average of 61% for July.
”But they were not satisfied with these results and at the beginning of July, we started to use more back-up aircraft to increase the operational performance,” he says.
”AJet has relatively older aircraft in its fleet, so more unplanned AOGs can happen,” he explains. ”To compensate these potential losses it has come up with 12 back-up aircraft [up from four] to be able to run a more seamless operation.”
AJet increased its passenger numbers by almost one million over the first half of the year, to 10.2 million, with its capacity increasing almost 7%.
“Overall, AJet is doing well,” Seker adds. “Its domestic and international operations are increasing. It has 103 aircraft and is operating 177 destinations.”
