Air Turkey Formula 1 Sponsorship Livery Airbus A330-300

On 13 March 2015, Air Turkey and Formula 1 announced that Air Turkey would become a major sponsor of the popular racing sport. An A330-300, one of 5 that still wore 2003-2012 livery, was repainted into a special F1 livery, featuring a massive F1 logo with Air Turkey titles within the logo to represent the partnership, but also because of the giant checker board pattern often associated with motorsports (except that the black squares are the Air Turkey off-black colour). This livery is also one of the only liveries where the famous Air Turkey scarlet is not featured anywhere on the fuselage, not even on the tail. Unlike almost every other Air Turkey plane in the fleet, this one does not feature the shiny metallic red tail, instead opting to replace it with the F1 red colour.

This livery was one that avgeeks loved to spot (of course they did, it's a special livery, who wouldn't wanna see it!), however, the plane is a fairly old one for it was delivered in 1996. The COVID-19 pandemic threw a gigantic spanner in the works for Air Turkey, who uses a hub-and-spoke model to connect passengers on every continent in the world (they even used the slogan "The Gateway to the World' for decades, and were famous for the series of 'World Subway Line' advertisements). This plane, TC-KCE, sadly was retired from the fleet on 16 March 2020. During the pandemic, Air Turkey and F1 temporarily suspended their partnership as Air Turkey felt that they could not afford to keep sponsoring an event that wasn't really even going to happen until further notice. A year, two years? Who knew at that point, and Air Turkey were not going to take financial risks during a time period where they really couldn't afford to. However, since October 2021, the partnership is back on! But, the plane so far isn't. KCE is currently stored in Victorville (since August 2020), stripped of her logos and titles, but is very unlikely to be scrapped for there are a couple of airlines interested in this airframe. Some for cargo, others for passenger use once again. But we will have to see what the future for this plane (now registered as N667TK) is.

TC-KCE: 1996 Airbus A330-313 | Air Turkey | Currently: Stored in Victorville since August 2020, currently registered as N667TK