Turkish Airlines Logo — THY — Turkish Airlines, Inc. is the airline national of Turkey based in Istanbul . Operates a network of scheduled flights to 140 international cities and 35 domestic cities, operating a total of 155 airports in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The airline’s main airport is the Atatürk International Airport (IST), with operations in the Esenboga Airport (ESB) and the International Airport Sabiha Gökçen (SAW). In 2006, 2007 and 2008, THY carried 17 million, 19.7 million and 25.5 million passengers with total revenues of 2,230, 3,000 and 4,500 million, respectively. The airline has about 12,000 employees. From 1 April 2008, THY is an official member of Star Alliance .

The airline was founded on May 20th of 1933 , as the State Airlines Administration DHY — Devlet Hava Yollari İşletmesi İdaresi . It began operations with flights Istanbul — Eskişehir — Ankara in August 1933. In September 1937, the airline received three biplane De Havilland DH 86B. In December 1937 , received his fourth DHY aircraft . The growing fleet of aircraft allowed to DHY expand its network of domestic flights to Izmir , Adana , Kayseri and Diyarbakır . The name was changed by Devlet Hava Yollari Umum Müdürlüğü (DHY) in June 1938 . The first international flight was made ​​in 1947 at Athens but it took another forty years before they produce their first longhaul flights to the Far East and throughout the North Atlantic .

In a major restructuring, the state company DHY was replaced by the corporate combination THY — Turk Hava Yollari AO 20 February of 1956 . The airline’s shares were transferred to the Public Participation Administration in 1990, which took the company public in December of that year selling 5% of the shares. The government later sold 23.0% of the shares to the public in December 2004 and 28.75% in May 2006 . The airline is owned by TC Privatisation Administration (49%) and shareholders private (51%). The airline owns 50% of the shares in affiliated airline SunExpress , half of these is owned by Lufthansa of Germany . It has since September 2006 for an airline catering company formed by JV with Do & Co Restaurants & Catering of Austria. Turkish Airlines took the Qualiflyer Group in 1999 because of incompatibilities with Swissair and Delta Airlines .

The request to join the Star Alliance was accepted in December 2006 . On April 1st of 2008 , Turkish Airlines joined the Star Alliance as a full member.

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