Turkish Airlines aims to reach 120M passengers in 2023

Turkey's national flag carrier Turkish Airlines targets to carry 120 million passengers with its 500-aircraft fleet in 2023, the company's chairman said on Thursday.

"With our direct flights since last June, we aim to take Turkey among prior destinations for qualified tourists," Ilker Aycı stressed during a tourism event in the Mediterranean resort city Antalya, according to a press release.

Aycı said the year 2020 will be better than 2019, which has also completed successfully.

Turkey hosted 39.5 million tourists in 2018, while the number of foreign people visiting Turkey reached over 36.4 million in the first nine months of 2019, he recalled.

Touching on the flag carrier's figures, he said while the number of annual passengers of Turkish Airlines was around 10 million in 2003, it reached 75.2 million as of the end of 2018.

"Turkish Airlines flies to 316 cities in 126 countries globally, while the number of destinations of the carrier was 104 in 2013," he said.

"As the largest services exporter of our country, we are the biggest stakeholder of the Turkish tourism sector," Aycı added.