2003 Annual Report - Turkish Airlines

While scheduled domestic flightcapacity remained the same as inthe previous year, traffic increasedby 2.1%; the passenger load factorwas 72.1%, an increase of 1.4points.Charter FlightsCargoIn 2003, Turkish Airlines achieved 2,731 charter flights;of these 2,342 were international and 389 weredomestic. Compared to 2002, there was an increase of20% on charter flights. The distribution of internationalflights by region were as follows - Europe 86%, theMiddle East 7%, North Africa 5% and the Far East 2%.Pilgrimage Flights (Hadj and Umrah)A total of 109,549 pilgrims were carried on Hadj,departing between January 10 and February 5 andarriving between February 14 and March 13.The negative effect on air transportation of the war in Iraqand the SARS epidemic, which started in the Far East andspreaded to other regions caused Turkish Airlines cargocapacity to decrease by 0.6%. This reduction in capacityresulted in a decline in cargo traffic, which also decreaseby 0.8%. Despite the decrease in traffic, Turkish Airlinescargo income increased by 5.8% since top priority wasgiven to high revenue cargo in the utilization of theexisting cargo capacity. This, coupled with theapplication of a flexible pricing policy, made TurkishAirlines capable of adapting to the changes in marketdemand.A total of 27,696 passengers were carried on Umrah.16