Wow: 70% Of Passengers On Turkish Airlines’ New Denver Flight Connect Through Istanbul

Turkish Airlines’ newest route to the United States connects Istanbul Airport

with Denver International Airport

. Launched in June 2024, the service began operating three times a week, before quickly increasing to four weekly the following month. This year, as the airline enters the peak summer season, it hopes to offer up to seven flights per week—a testament to its confidence surrounding the route’s performance. We take a look at the route’s load factors, demand and the importance of connecting traffic beyond Istanbul.

Frequency increases

Turkish Airlines

plans to up its frequency on the new Istanbul to Denver route this summer, operating up to daily flights at its peak. According to data provided by aviation analytics firm Cirium, Turkish Airlines plans to increase frequencies from the current four weekly services up to five weekly in June. Then, from July 3 until August 3, the airline will move to a daily service catering to peak summer demand. Frequencies over the summer look as follows, all with an Airbus A350-900:

Originally, Turkish Airlines had planned daily flights all the way through between June 7 and October 25 according to schedules filed to Cirium, but this was ultimately reversed.

Two changes are to come from October 26. First, frequencies will reduce back to four weekly (before rising to five again in December and January). Second, the route will shift entirely to a Boeing 787-9 instead.

Performance to date

IST-DEN is TK’s newest route connecting Turkey to the United States. It was launched on June 11 with a Boeing 777-300ER though this was an aircraft choice that the carrier symbolically uses when it starts new routes. The June 13 service was also operated by the Boeing widebody, while all flights after were switched to the A350.

It was a similar story when Turkish Airlines relaunched flights to Damascus following the regime change in Syria. The initial flight was operated by a 777, before switching to the Airbus A330 and Boeing 737.

Denver is the airline’s 14 destination in the United States. While booking data shows that only 9,500 passengers flew roundtrip between the two cities, point-to-point traffic will be stimulated by the launch of a new non-stop service. TK knows this from experience in the US, having launched Dallas which had just under 8,000 passengers in 2019. With the carrier’s non-stop flight, numbers that year reached around 30,000 with most flying TK.

Data released by the US Department of Transport details how many passengers flew TK between IST-DEN. From its launch in July till the end of 2024, the carrier flew 53,000 passengers across its 73,000 seats, representing an average load factor of 73%. December 2024 was the month it carried the most passengers, at 9,200.

While Denver was Turkish Airlines’ weakest US route in terms of load factors last year, that needs to be understood in context as the route has only just launched. In other words, relatively poor loads during its first six months of operation do not tell much of a story.

Connecting traffic

The large majority of passengers on these services connected onto other flights in the Turkish Airlines network from Istanbul. Booking data shows that of the 53,000 passengers, 37,000 connected over Istanbul or roughly 70% of the total traffic. Turkish Airlines’ well-developed hub has thus been of great help in facilitating the route’s overall performance. Only approximately 10,000 passengers flew point-to-point.

The most popular destinations over Istanbul were:

• Delhi
• Athens
• Cairo
• Mumbai
• Nairobi
• Addis Ababa
• Ercan
• Kuwait City
• Dubai
• Rome

A handful of passengers (about 2,500 to be exact) also originated in Phoenix and connecting through Denver, terminating in Istanbul. A more significant portion, totaling 4,500 people, connecting via both Denver and Istanbul – the most popular routing being Phoenix-Denver-Istanbul-Medina.