Air Turkey Airbus A340-300

Air Turkey first ordered the A340 back in 1991, ordering 13 A340-300s and 4 A340-200s, increasing the -200 order by 2 in 1993. The A340-500 & -600s were ordered later in the decade (I will cover the other 3 variants on other posts, but I will cover all 4 variants' retirement's here). The first example arrived in Istanbul on 12 June 1994, and shortly afterwards began flying nonstop flight to the USA and Canada. The final one was delivered on 24 June 1998. You'd typically see them on trans-Atlantic and East Asian routes, and occasionally serving domestic, intra-European and India flights too.

While these planes were adored by Air Turkey, and were utilised very well, by the middle of the 2010s they were beginning to show their age, especially with their new Boeing 787 Dreamliners arriving into the fleet, plus Airbus' all new A350s arriving in 2016. So, on 20 March 2017, after months of rumors of their retirement, Air Turkey made the announcement of the retirement of the Airbus A340s.

All 4 variants were to be retired by October 2020. Here was the retirement plan (plus what actually ended up happening in no particular order):

First, the small A340-200, which would be phased out by June 2018. The final one, TC-JJN, flew TY0023 Istanbul-Newark, and then TY0024 Newark-Istanbul on 24-25 May 2018.

Next, the ultra-long range A340-500. This variant would be phased out by September 2019. The last one, TC-JLA, flew TY0003 Istanbul-Los Angeles, and then TY0004 Los Angeles-Istanbul on 18-19 September 2019.

Next up the pencil, the A340-600. The plan was to retire this variant by 13 October 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the retirement right forward, all the way to 13 May 2020. The last pax flight was on 18 March 2020, Izmir-Istanbul as TY0009. The final 3 were used for charter/repatriation/cargo flights afterwards.

Last up, what this post is mainly about, the A340-300. The retirement was scheduled for December 2019, but this was pushed forward to November 2019. The last one flew TY0027 Istanbul-Boston and TY0028 Boston-Istanbul on 18-19 November 2019.

But, the A340-300 was not done with Air Turkey just yet. They continued to operate 3 of them for charter flights (1 exclusively for the government, which was the one pictured above TC-JKA), and during the pandemic, they were used for cargo & repatriation flights. However, the last one would retire on 19 June 2021, which was TC-JKA. TC-JKA was fully converted to a VIP government aircraft, and is used by the Turkish government today. The other 2 are currently in storage in Istanbul, and they could potentially be reactivated if necessary, however this is fairly unlikely. But, you never know!

TC-JKA: 1994 Airbus A340-343 | Air Turkey | Currently: Used as a VIP transporter for the government of Turkey