About Turkish Airlines
Turkish Airlines (Turkish Türk Hava Yollari) (THY) is the national airline of Turkey based in Istanbul. It operates a network of scheduled services to 103 international and 28 domestic cities, serving a total of 134 airports, in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Far East, Africa, and the United States. The airline's main base is Atatürk International Airport (IST), Istanbul, with secondary hubs at Esenboga International Airport (ESB), Ankara, and Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (SAW), Istanbul. In 2006, it carried 17.5 million passengers with total revenues of US$3 billion. [1] The airline has around 12,000 employees.
History
The airline was established on May 20, 1933, as the State Airlines Administration - Hava Yollari Devlet Isletmesi Idaresi. It began operations with an Istanbul, Eskisehir, Ankara service in August 1933. The name was changed to Devlet Hava Yollari Umum Müdürlügü (DHY) in June 1938. The first international flight was launched in 1947 to Athens but it was another 40 years before the introduction of long-haul flights to the Far East and across the Atlantic.
In a major reorganisation the state company DHY was replaced with a mixed corporation, Türk Hava Yollari AO (THY) on 20 February 1956. The airline's shares were passed to the Prime Ministry Public Participation Administration in 1990, which took the company public first in December 1990 selling 5% of the shares. The government later sold about 23.0% of the shares to the public in December 2004 and a further 28.75% in May 2006. The airline is owned by TC Privatisation Administration (49%) and private shareholders (51%). It also has a 50% holding in affiliated airline SunExpress, the other half of which owned by Thomas Cook of Germany. It has set up in September 2006 an airline catering JV with Do&Co Restaurants & Catering of Austria. Also Turkish Airlines will join to Star Alliance. Turkish Airlines quit Qualiflyer group in 1999, due to incompatibilites with Swissair and Delta.