Turkish Airlines To Place Order 345 Jets, Become World’s Largest A350 Operator

by Gary Leff

Turkish Airlines, which has around 435 planes in its fleet and another 100 on order, is set to announce a major order from Airbus for 345 planes. It will likely be reported in many places as 355 planes, folding in 10 Airbus A350-900s whose purchase was already announced. When you see coverage of the order, talking about how much it is ‘worth’, remember to divide by two.

Star Alliance member and United Airlines partner Turkish Airlines is over 49% owned by the government, is the national carrier, and operates in some measure as a state instrument. They serve more countries than any other airline. And while they operate a mixed fleet of Boeing and Airbus planes, and have more of both on order, their future is clearly Airbus. For long haul flying they’ll become the single largest operator of A350 aircraft.

The order is expected to consist of:

  • 250 Airbus A321neo
  • 75 Airbus A350-900
  • 15 A350-1000
  • 5 A350F freighters

The order is anticipated to be made public at the Dubai Air Show which begins this week, and may be announced as soon as Monday. The leak of this information could speed up the announcement.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Absolutely love the A350, it’s by far the most comfortable plane for long hauls (after the A380, but it’s discontinued) and far quieter and wider than the 787 (and doesn’t have the idiotic window shading system that flight attendants can lock you out from).

    Happy to see this order!

  3. We will see Monday but if this becomes reality, it will be a massive boost for Airbus and esp. for the A350 which is on track to become one of the best-selling widebody aircraft of all time.
    And this is also a big boost for Rolls-Royce which should be able to turn itself around w/ all of this business given that it is the exclusive engine supplier for Airbus widebodies.
    It is no surprise that Airbus says it is boosting production of the A350 to 10/month.
    The Middle East carriers plus Turkish will ensure plenty of competition for the Americas and western Europe to Africa and Asia.

  5. Agree with the previous commenter. They need better seats on the 350. The current seats are tight and claustrophobic. The Aeroflot seats may be a better option but with an armrest and better placed seat controls.

  7. @Roy

    Since FedEx and UPS are in a panic dumping pilots, should be no issue to fill the flight deck.
    It’s the youngest pilots that will be culled from the cargo carriers.
    Therefore, living & working in Europe should be interesting.
    Fly in and out of Istanbul, but reside somewhere in western or Central Europe.

Comments are closed.