Turkey's leading low-cost airline Pegasus Airlines continued to expand as its sales income rose by 33% compared to the same period last year.
Its share of the domestic market rose from 26.7% to 28% and its share of the international market rose from 9.1% to 9.8% during this period. Its gross profit reached 86.4 million Turkish Liras.
The first half of 2014 saw a rise in the volume of sales with a corresponding fall in the cost per available seat kilometre, which fell by 2% to €4.06 down from €4.13 for the same period last year.
Pegasus also increased the number of guests it flew and its load factor during the first six months of this year. The number of guests flying on both domestic and international flights increased by 22.4% to 9.2 million, compared with 7.6 million guests for the first six months of 2013. Accordingly the number of guests taking domestic flights in Turkey was 5.7 million, a rise of 21.5% compared to the same period last year, while the number of guests on international flights was 3.5 million, a rise of 24% compared to the same period in 2013.
During the first half of 2014, the load factor on domestic routes reached 82%, while it was 75.4% on international routes. During the same period the number of available seats increased by 22.3%.
The data for Turkey's aviation sector shows that Pegasus grew 1.4 times faster than the rest of the Turkish domestic market for its domestic flights and 1.7 faster for its international flights during the first six months of 2014. Pegasus' share of the domestic market is rose from 26.7% to 28% and its share of the international market from 9.1% to 9.8% during the January-June period.
General Manager of Pegasus Airlines, Sertac Haybat said, “We will continue to be one of Europe's fastest-growing low-cost airlines in the coming period with our high rate of average daily aircraft utilisation and our recent aircraft order to the value of US$12.2 billion. In an expanding market we have increased our capacity, while at the same time continuing to increase our market share as we have done in recent years. We have also succeeded in reducing the cost per available seat kilometre by using our aircraft efficiently.”
