ANKARA
Turkey’s civil aviation had a record-breaking year in 2014, Turkish Transportation Minister Lutfi Elvan announced on Tuesday.
Passenger numbers jumped 10.6 percent to over 166 million in that year, Elvan said, in a statement released by the Transportation Ministry.
The minister added that his ministry would work with the same determination to break these same records again in 2015.
The number of passengers has been posting remarkable rises steadily since the liberalization of the sector in 2003, Elvan said.
“The number of domestic passengers exceeds Turkey’s population, which is around 76.5 million, by 8.6 million to reach 85.6 million” he stated.
Airports in the country also broke the air traffic record of all time for Turkey, with 1.6 million takeoffs and landings in 2014, the statement said.
Freight shipments from airports also increased 10.4 percent to 2.86 million tons in 2014.
Elvan also noted that the number of international flight passengers was at about 80.36 million last year, an increase of 9.5 percent from 2013.
Istanbul Ataturk Airport, which is located on the European side of the city, also kept its place as the busiest airport, with 48 percent of all international flight passengers.
Turkish civil aviation had broken the same record in 2013, flying over 150 million passengers, an increase of 14.6 percent compared with 2012.
