Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Turkish Airlines third quarter 2023 conference call and webcast. There will be a question-and-answer session after the presentation, and these will consist of written questions only, no audio questions. If you wish to ask a question, you can send your questions from the webcast page. With that, I will now hand you over to our speakers for today, Associate Professor Murat Şeker, member of the board and the executive committee, as well as the Chief Financial Officer of Turkish Airlines, and Mr. Mehmet Fatih Korkmaz, Head of Investor Relations at Turkish Airlines. Gentlemen, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. A warm welcome to you all from Istanbul. The results we announced yesterday underpinned our industrial leading position with sustained profitability. Turkish Airlines is among the few global carriers to successfully adapt itself to the new normal and exceed 2019's capacity by 17% in the first nine months of the year. Before going into details of our third quarter performance, I'd like to reflect on some recent highlights. Last September, we organized a non-deal roadshow in New York. Meetings with investors on our year-to-date performance and 2033 targets were quite valuable to us. We look forward to similar engagements in the future, where we will address our strategic targets and growth areas. To provide you with more insights, our roadshow presentation is currently available on our investor relations website.
For those seeking more details, we will also publish a comprehensive presentation shortly. Ongoing efforts to elevate our brand continue to be appreciated all around the world. This year, we have been honored as Turkey's most valuable brand by Brand Finance for the sixth time, and as Europe's best airline by Skytrax for the eighth time. More recently, we were once again recognized as the World-Class Airline by APEX, one of the world's largest international airline associations. We will continue to invest in our product and offerings to become most prestigious airline in the world by 2033. In the third quarter, Turkish Airlines and Istanbul Airport maintained their position as the busiest network carrier and airport in Europe. Looking forward, we will strongly contribute to Istanbul's position as a global aviation hub as we expand our global footprint.
Now, I would like to turn your attention to our third quarter results. In the quarter, the quarter saw a marked increase in travel demand, primarily driven by the belated opening of Asia and ongoing travel appetite across Atlantic. Our operational efficiency, vast network, and the robust international demand allows us to run a profitable operation throughout the quarter. Our July to September performance stands as one of our strongest, underlining Turkish Airlines' leading position in the industry, especially in meeting the pent-up demand for air travel. During the third quarter, we carried 25 million passengers, reflecting around a 10% increase year-over-year on the back of 9% higher capacity. With strong international demand, our load factor was recorded as 85.6%, two percentage points above 2019.
Building on this momentum, we expanded our global reach and connection power with our new strategic partnerships. Recently announced collaboration with Thai Airways, China Eastern, and IndiGo tapped into the potential of Istanbul as a major connection hub, also enhancing tourism prospects between the respective countries. These alliances demonstrate Turkish Airlines' commitment to the region in the coming decade. In the third quarter, we sustained our revenue growth trend on a year-over-year basis. Total revenues for the quarter reached $6.3 billion, and it was recorded as the highest quarterly revenue to date. Passenger revenues increased by 9% compared to the third quarter of 2022 and surpassed $5.5 billion. I believe this is a particular noteworthy, considering the high base we set last year. Our cargo revenues, on the other hand, decreased by 30% to almost $620 million.
The annual decline in cargo unit revenues and volumes were better than the previous quarter by around 12 percentage points as the impact of the earthquake relief efforts phased out. With this, in August, Turkish Cargo ranked third in the world in terms of freight ton kilometers, according to IATA. In order to crystallize the value in our cargo operations, we were also advancing in the e-commerce sector with Turkish Cargo's new brand, Widect. Set to launch at the beginning of next year, Widect will offer integrated air cargo solutions for corporate customers. Its end-to-end services will encompass the whole value chain and leverage our extensive flight network and Turkish Cargo's logistics expertise. In the third quarter, we generated a profit of $1.7 billion from main operations.
Also, we achieved an EBITDA of $2.5 billion, with an exceptional high margin of 40%. Net income realized as $1.9 billion, marking our ninth consecutive profitable quarter. With this, our net income reached $2.8 billion for the first nine months. $2 billion of free cash flow increased our liquidity level to about $6.8 billion. Our high liquidity and low indebtedness significantly benefit us in the current interest rate environment. We are also strategically paying down some of our highest cost borrowings before their maturities to further improve our debt structure. At this point, I would like to reiterate that we believe current ratings assigned to Turkish Airlines by the three rating agencies do not reflect our financial strength, especially considering our sustainable profitability, strong liquidity, high debt service coverage ratios.
Amidst recent geopolitical tensions in the region, our forward bookings for the fourth quarter exhibit strength, signaling optimism for the year's remainder. However, challenges like inadequate aircraft availability and engine durability issues, particularly Pratt & Whitney's GTF engine problems, continue to constrain passenger capacity. Taking this into account, we are targeting a high double-digit capacity increase in the fourth quarter. For the entire year, we expect our passenger capacity to grow by 17%-19%, with a low single-digit increase in passenger yields relative to last year. With continued revenue growth and resilient margins, we expect to generate 13%-14% return on invested capital for the full year. We are still working on the details of our 2024 budget, as the visibility of the aircraft availability remains low due to the problems mentioned earlier.
At the same time, the vague macro, macroeconomic outlook and current geopolitical situation in the Middle East present challenges for projecting the demand environment. For now, we aim to increase our passenger capacity by high single digits in 2024. However, we will continue to monitor our booking curve, global travel appetite, macroeconomic environment, and fine-tune our projections. We expect to finalize the budgeting process through the end of this year, and we'll disclose the details accordingly. Now, let me turn over to Fatih Bey to elaborate on our key financial results and provide additional insights.
Thank you, Murat Bey, and good afternoon, everyone. After a strong first half performance, we continued to increase passenger capacity in parallel with the resilient demand environment. In the third quarter, our capacity surpassed the same period of 2022 by 8%, slowing down from 22% increase in the first six months of the year due to the base effect. As a proportion of the pre-pandemic levels, our international passenger capacity remains substantially above European and global averages. Our passenger traffic at Istanbul Airport continued to be robust. In the three months to September, the number of international transfer passengers rose by 16% and reached 18% above pre-COVID levels. Similarly, our direct international passengers surpassed the 2019 figure by almost 26%.
In this segment, we experienced a mid-single digit annual decline due to the normalization of the passenger mix towards transfer traffic. From a regional perspective, our operational performance was materially above the pre-pandemic levels, though annual performances varied depending on the region-wide basis set last year. Far East and Americas remained the top performing regions during the quarter. The delayed reopening of the Far East provides significant momentum for our revenues. Accordingly, we increased our capacity to the region by around 30%, and the load factor rose by 2.3 percentage points year-over-year. Second bank structure that was introduced at the end of last year yielded satisfying results so far, as it offers better connection times, resulting in enhanced connectivity and aircraft utilization.
We will support our network growth in the region by relaunching our direct flights to Osaka in December, followed by the opening of our first route in Australia next year. Strong ethnic demand, extended summer season, and higher business class preferences results in 8% higher revenue yields in the Americas. As we channel passenger capacity to capture fast-growing demand in the Far East... Our capacity in the Americas increased by only 2% compared to the same period last year. Consequently, the region's load factor climbed by one and a half percentage points. We anticipate that the current developments in the Middle East will have an impact on the transfer traffic to the region. Our sales team aims to recoup losses by targeting additional traffic from India and Eastern Europe.
On November 15th, we will commence our flight to our 25th destination in the region with the opening of Detroit, which is expected to stimulate additional demand from our network. Compared to the previous quarters, we experienced fewer operational problems at European airports. However, airspace congestion was increasingly felt and negatively affected our on-time performance. Our passenger traffic in the region remains broadly stable throughout the quarter. The demand from the Far East, counterbalanced by intensifying competition within the region, coupled with aggressive pricing from the low-cost carriers. In the Middle East, competition and the protest in Israel continued to drag on demand, causing load factor to deteriorate by 7 percentage points. The current geopolitical situation in the region makes us vigilant. We suspended our Tel Aviv route after the conflict emerged, and it will remain closed for the time being.
Although Israel's capacity share is considerably low, accounting for around 1% of our total ASK, further escalation remains a risk factor. We are dynamically reallocating capacity to other countries to mitigate some portion of this impact. The tragic earthquake in Morocco, increasing competition for Umrah travel, and FX shortages were the main headwinds for our routes to Africa. Introduction of the e-visa for Turkish citizens by Egypt fell short of compensating the demand. As a result, we reduced our passenger capacity to the region by around 4% year-over-year. This adjustment stabilized the load factor at 81%, about 1 percentage point higher than the pre-pandemic level. In the third quarter, our passenger revenues increased by approximately 9%, mainly driven by higher volumes.
On the cargo front, the annual decrease in our cargo revenues decelerated from 44% in the second quarter to 30% in the third. This improvement can be attributed to a relatively supportive operating environment and phased out earthquake impacts. In the three months to September, our cargo yields were more than 30% above 2019 levels, and 10% premium compared to the industry. More notably, after 20 months of continuous declines, our carried cargo volume marked its first annual increase in September. On a global basis, signals related to cargo demand became more entangled. While tighter financial conditions and slowing international trade applied downward pressure on global cargo prices, the recent stabilization of volumes will offer a more positive outlook. Yet, neither current PMI nor inventory levels in the U.S. and Europe indicate a material resurgence in demands.
At the same time, the increased availability of vessels compounds the supply and demand imbalance. Consequently, we remain on the cautious side and anticipate a modest peak season in Q4. As you can see, our on-hand liquidity increased by over $2 billion in the first nine months to over $6.8 billion. Strong operational cash inflow reduced net debt by $7.8 billion to $6.2 billion as of September 30, down from its peak level of $14 billion at the end of 2020. As a result, our LTM leverage decreased to its lower level of 1.1 x by the end of the quarter. Our robust operational performance on the back of annually lower fuel prices translated into almost $4.9 billion of EBITDA for the first nine months of the year.
With the strong contribution from our investment portfolio, our net income recorded higher than our net operating profit, with a 17.6% margin. As you recall, in the first half, we had several one-off cost items amounting to $370 million due to the earthquakes in Turkey and personal compensation against inflation. As we concluded the third quarter without any significant one-off expense, our cost base started to normalize. Even though we've seen a sharp increase in fuel prices recently, our current pass-through capability, combined with a 30% hedging level, offers up to 90% protection from surging prices for the last quarter of the year. Our risk management and commercial teams are in close collaboration to manage our fuel exposure for the upcoming periods.
Looking at the unit expense breakdown, we recorded a 5% decrease in total cost per ASK, and a 12% increase in ex-fuel cost during the quarter compared to the same period of last year. Lower fuel prices and crack spread were the main drivers of the decrease in unit expenses. On the other hand, the increase in ex-fuel unit costs primarily resulted from inflation and personal compensation against inflation. Additional contributors to the increase were airport, airport fee escalations and higher sales commissions. In the third quarter, capacity and passenger numbers of AJet rose by around 30% compared to last year. With 23 net additions in the first nine months, its number of aircraft reached to 87. We are aiming to expand its fleet to 93 aircraft by the year end.
Right now, AJet team is working towards obtaining the operating permits, and we expect the company to commence its flights within the next year under the new structure. In the coming months, we will also unveil its new corporate identity and brand repositioning with details. Turning to our outlook, as Murat mentioned, for the entire year, our capacity is expected to be between 17%-19% higher than the last year, excluding any unexpected aircraft-related problems. Although global travel appetite remains constructive, geopolitical issues pose a downside risk to the demand environment. On the cost side, as one of impacts from the earthquake relief efforts and inflation payments abate, our ex-fuel unit cost will continue to normalize. Accordingly, we anticipate that the ex-fuel cost will be up by high single percentage points compared to the last year, same as our previous guidance.
On the other hand, annual gross CapEx is expected to be around $5 billion-$5.5 billion, with 48 net aircraft additions, including other fixed investments. With this, we conclude our presentation and can now continue with the Q&A session.
Right. Thank you very much for that presentation, speakers. So ladies and gentlemen, it is now time for our question-and-answer session, which will consist of written questions only, as we said. So if you wish to ask a question, please type your question into the Ask a Question text area, and then click the Submit button. And speakers, over to you for those written questions.
Hello, everyone. We have number of questions from our analysts. We would like to thank you for thank them for their contribution. Unfortunately, we had an operations interruption last night. So, Murat, our experienced network-related interruptions last night, what will be the impact and what is the main reason behind it?
So last night, as we were having a planned and scheduled IT maintenance task, there was a problem, and then that problem during the maintaining operation led to collapse of the related services, and that led to a blockage of our operation for about 3 hours. We regained all the IT systems by about close to 10:30 P.M. last night, and everything is in full operation as of today. Overall, we had to cancel about 200 flights, whereas usually in a day, we have about 1,400 flights, so the overall impact was limited. And also the financial impact of this operation was quite limited.
Continuing with the recent GTF problems, we got questions from HSBC and JP Morgan. How many aircraft did you ground due to the GTF engine problem? Will these challenges impact your capacity targets for the rest of this year and 2024?
So in the last quarter's call, we said we were expecting to ground around 10-12 aircraft by the end of this year. Our current expectation is around 14-15 aircraft. As the new engine deliveries come from Pratt & Whitney, we revise our projections, but we are not too far away from our earlier guidance. So this has an effect on the fourth quarter capacity, but we are still quite aligned with our annual capacity growth projections of 15%-20% ASK growth for the remaining part of 2023. And for the next year, we, as we also said in the second quarter's call, we might end up grounding up to 40 aircraft next year.
However, we have been trying to fill that gap up with, operating leases and, quite a large number of with these, aircrafts. So the net impact of this grounding will be, quite limited in terms of, new capacity put in the market. And we are also continuing to compensation discussions with Pratt & Whitney. As you know, we have a partnership, a joint venture in Istanbul, an engine overhaul facility. So it's quite, continuing to negotiation in a positive tone.
Murat, could you elaborate on the effects of the current situation in Israel and the main Middle East?
So of course, the turmoil is not affecting Israel operations, but Lebanon and Oman are also affected. But overall, the ASK, the capacity provided to Israel, makes around 1% of our overall ASK, and the share of the total revenue is more or less the same, around 1%. And overall, Middle East makes around 10% of the revenues. We have suspended the operation to Tel Aviv until the mid of November, and afterwards, our current schedule is 2 frequencies per day. It is going to be about 70%-80% reduction in our actual original capacity. As I said, demand to Lebanon and Jordan are also affected. However, we were already seeing some drops in the demand to and from Middle East as early as second quarter of this year.
There was some idle capacity, and we were transferring that capacity to Europe already. So this was the new unexpected situation that arise from the region, was already within our projections, and that's why the additional negative impact is limited.
Continuing with the questions related to our financial results. What factors contribute to better than anticipated financial performance in the third quarter?
So especially the strength of the passenger demand from Far East and Americas region kept us having strong yields. Elevated yields, along with the lower fuel prices and normalizing the one-off impacts, were the core reasons. Number of passengers rose by around 10% year-over-year in this quarter. The yields were 23% higher than 2019 level, and still were slightly higher than 2022 level. Due to the decrease in the jet fuel price, the unit cost, including the hedge, decreased around 26% compared to the same quarter of last year.
Were there any one-off items reflected in the third quarter results? Do we expect any one-off expense in the fourth quarter?
In the third quarter, there were some compensation due to the late aircraft deliveries, especially the 787s that were delivered late. And for the last quarter, we will still get some compensation, although much limited, because of the late deliveries, aircraft deliveries. There will be an amount of around $100 million spent on earthquake-related housing project, as we announced in our annual meeting, and as we have disclosed earlier with the public. And we expect, due to the strong financial results, we expect to pay some amount- some further amount on personal bonuses. So overall, we are expecting around $100 million-$120 million net expenditure due to this kind of one-off effects.
Mati, our traffic data indicates a sequential decline in direct passengers over the past four months. How do you interpret this trend, Batuhan from Ata Invest also asked this question?
Well, we observed the share of international direct passenger actually coming back to their historical averages. Like in 2018 and 2019, the share of direct international passenger was around 45% levels. It went up as high as 51% last year because of the excess demand. But this year, in the first nine months, it's back to 44% levels. And so this is actually a normalization, is what we see. And the share of transit, as more countries opened up, especially the Far East region, the share of transit passengers increased from the low level of 49% last year to 56% this year. So what we are seeing is a normalization in terms of distribution. However, of course, the amounts, the number of passengers are increasing.
This year, for example, in the first eight months, total number of tourists that came to Turkey was up by 14% over last year, and it reached 33 million tourists. Overall, for this year, we expect a 17% increase on top of last year, and reaching a number of tourists, the number of tourists reaching to 60 million this year.
Could you comment on the increase in your deferred income?
Well, as we are still seeing, the sales numbers are strong, and it's higher than its usual historical average, and forward bookings continue to support this strong sales force. We might—we are seeing it's around like 13%-14%, and the amount of deferred income to overall revenues, which is higher than its historical average of around 12%. It might come down a little bit in the last quarter. However, we are still going to see this continuing through the next quarter in the first quarters of 2024.
Regarding our outlook, we got a number of questions from our analysts. What are the current trends in forward bookings, and can you provide some additional details from a geographical perspective? Also, do you have any additional insights on regional capacity composition?
Well, overall, we are seeing a positive outlook, especially for the Christmas term. The demand is likely to continue to be strong in Europe and Americas, despite the double-digit capacity increase. However, Middle East, as I have expressed in the earlier question, the conflict we see in Middle East pose some risk regarding the forward bookings from this region. In Europe, the long-haul capacity additions of the peers and aggressive pricing of the LCCs did put some pressure, yet still our schedule consistency and the route and availability, along with increasing transfer traffic from our Far East routes, allow us to withstand the competitive pressure. In Far East, capacity increase and new entrants in the market intensified the competition, and the relative demand weakness throughout the region compared to previous quarters increased this situation.
But overall, year-round, we expect a 10% increase capacity in Europe, about 30% increase in Far East, about 11% increase in America, and the domestic demand, ASK, sorry, these are ASK numbers, to increase by 28%, Africa by 7%, and Middle East by 26%. Which around will be, as I said earlier, between 15%-20% ASK growth on the top of last year. And this ASK distribution increase will make around a quarter of the capacity will be from and to U.S., Americas, about a quarter from Europe, less than 10% from Africa, and about 10% domestic, and another 10% from Middle East, and the remaining will be Far East region.
Are there any updates on revenue and margin forecast for this year?
Well, considering our strong third quarter results, we are increasing our EBITDA margin guidance from the earlier announcement of 25%-27% to 26%-29% levels. In the nominal EBITDA amount, we expect that to be around $5.5 billion-$6 billion levels.
In terms of ex-fuel CASK, what is the projected change?
In ex-fuel, ex-fuel CASK is expected to be around high single digits year-over-year, mainly due to the one-off items in the first half, like the earthquake and the related expenses, the personnel salary increases due to inflation, and overall impact of inflation on handling expenses and the catering expenses are the core reasons of the increase in ex-fuel CASK. But overall, we expect these to lead to a high single-digit increase in ex-fuel CASK.
What, how do you view the demand outlook for the coming year?
Well, for the next year, we're still working on the budget, and the current visibility for the passenger demand environment is low due to the uncertain macro outlook. I mean, the interest rates globally, we observe, are high, and they might have an impact on the potential appetite to travel. And the excess savings that was, that were reserved for travel purposes might have decreased, so this is on the negative side. However, excluding the geopolitical events, international travel, especially long-haul, out of Far East, seems to be still strong. Thus, we don't have any significant negative outlook. We expect to release our year 2024 guidance by the end of this year. Our initial thinking is still we'll be able to maintain a high single-digit passenger capacity increase with a very mild erosion in the yields for 2024.
Can you also shape the cost outlook a little bit?
Cost, one of the biggest cost items will be the collective bargaining agreement with the labor union, and considering the still ongoing high inflation environment in Turkey, that's going to be an important item to monitor. Similarly, as we keep observing the high inflation in all around the world, our other operational expenses, the big items on catering, on handling, on lounges, other operational expenses might push the costs higher next year.
Moving to fuel and hedging questions, what is the anticipated fuel cost for 2023, and your underlying assumptions?
So this year, we expect around 16% fuel cost decrease compared to last year. And as of now, our hedging ratio for the whole year is around 20%, and the break-even price of Brent is $79. And, the last quarter of this year, we expect the hedge ratio to go up to 30%. And, yeah, so it won't be a huge pressure-making item for us for this year.
What about the fuel strategy for 2024?
So going forward, there are—it's a two-way stream, it seems like. We see some downside risks for the global activity due to higher for longer interest rates, and which might result in lower overall demand. On the other side, there are some upside risks for Brent due to geopolitical risk arising out of the Middle East region, and in addition to the Saudi Arabia's and Russia's production cuts that was announced through the December. So it's hard to say which way it will go. We'll continue to implement our current hedging strategy with a target to reach up to 50% of our overall consumption. And our hedging strategy aims to take the positions for shorter tenors with a lower ratio in the current price environment.
Currently, we hedged already up to 10% of our 2024 fuel consumption, and we'll keep adding, increasing this ratio, reaching probably up to 40% by the end of 2024.
Moving to fleet questions, what is the projected year-end fleet size? Could you provide further details?
We expect to finish the year with about 440 aircraft. This will be overall 61 entries and about 15 exits from the fleet for 2023.
How do you envision the future fleet composition changing? And also, we have a question from Kurt, that he's asking about: How many aircraft are late in delivery this year, and what do you expect next year?
So there are some late deliveries. Of course, the 787s and NEOs were all delayed, some even from 2021. By the end of 2021, we saw deliveries. For the 2024 fleet, we are shaping our planning for about a high single-digit ASK growth. And as I said, we wanna finish this year, 2023, by about 440 aircraft. And next year, we are planning to reach a size of a net of about 40 aircraft next year, which is going to end up to help us finish the 2024 by about 480 aircraft. 15 of these will be firm orders from the OEMs, and about 25 aircraft will be operating leases.
Regarding your recent 28 additional operational leases to your fleet, should we subtract them from your intended 600 aircraft order?
So that large order book has been delayed for numerous reasons, and we expressed our thoughts and considerations in the last quarter's call. Unfortunately, those challenges are continuing. We have, though, made a significant amount of progress with both producers, reshaping up the order book on the wide-body and narrow-body front. We have not finalized, but as obviously, none of the OEMs are in a position to help us fill in the aircraft needs for the short terms, we decided to move more aggressively with the leasing companies. And as I said in the earlier question, we will be adding about 40 net delivery next year to the fleet. Fifteen of them are from the OEMs, and the rest are from operating leases. In 2025, we expect to add an additional 40-50 aircraft.
And again, like, about probably 20 will be firm orders from OEMs, and about 25 will be from operating leases. In 2026, about like 25 aircraft deliveries. So we have these negotiations, of course, some of these are still continuing, but we have made progress to fill in our short-term needs with the operating leases. Some of them are with operating leases, and with this big aircraft deal, some of it is gonna be compensated with these operating leases, and some of it maybe will be covering much farther away needs of Turkish Airlines after 2032, 2033, maybe.
What is the estimated CapEx for this year and the next?
So this year, CapEx hasn't changed since our last call. We expect to finish the year with about $5 billion-$5.5 billion gross CapEx. And next year, as we'll be getting more aircrafts, it will go up by about $500 million further to around $6 billion-$6.5 billion.
According to what is the forecasted net debt position at year-end, and when do you expect leverage to start increasing to previously guided levels?
So, well, in the third quarter, of course, and together with the financial performance and operational strength, our year-end net leverage guidance is going to be decreasing. Net debt to EBITDA, so net debt was gonna be declining from the top levels of 2020 to $8.5 billion-$9 billion, and the leverage ratio is going to be declining to 1x-1.5 x from 1.5x-2 x levels. So net debt will be declining to $7 billion-$7.5 billion and leverage to 1x-1.5 x levels.
Murat, are there any considerations for an IPO for any of our subsidiaries?
So this question always comes up, as we really do have quite strong subsidiaries in MRO capacity, Turkish Technic, in our cargo operations, Turkish Cargo, our ground handling operation, Turkish TGS, and the newly incorporated, to be incorporated, low-cost subsidiary, AnadoluJet. As of today, at the moment, we don't have any IPO consideration, but that or partnership, having strategic partners are always within considerations to help us grow our market size.
We have additional questions from our participants. Serhat from Yatırım Finansman is asking about: Is there a possibility to rethink PSS software strategy after yesterday's software issues?
Well, first of all, the problem wasn't a PSS specific issue. It was a very unrelated, maintaining problem that got affected some of our major, mainframe softwares. So that's why we don't have any... I mean, PSS has issues for various other reasons, that we, our IT teams are working on, whether to change or improve. But the issue that came up last year had nothing to do with the PSS software we use.
Kurt from Air Transport World, we already some part of his question, but Murat, do we see more alliances from Turkish Airlines, like with China Eastern, Thai Airways, IndiGo?
Definitely, especially in the long-haul areas, Far East and Americas in particular, we have a strong appetite to grow our engagements with our with other airlines. As we expressed in the presentation, Thai, China Eastern, the more extensive one with the IndiGo, such collaborative efforts are very valuable. We have been communicating with quite a bit such network carriers in Far East and Americas. We'll be announcing them as more progress is made, but that's one of our core strategic purposes to increase our operation, to increase our network in the long-haul destinations.
Sultan from AB is asking about: Can you remind us what is the reason behind the slow recovery in European capacity, and when do you expect it to recover?
So this is the slow recovery in European capacity. I mean, for us, we have been actually performing much better than European airlines in capacity. We put roughly 25% capacity in Europe compared to our 2019 level, at 25%, whereas our major European peers had a drop of around 5%-6% overall. Lufthansa had a drop of 21%, Air France 8% drop in passenger capacity as compared to 2019 levels. So we don't have a problem of putting capacity in Europe. On the contrary, we have increased the capacity in Europe in this year.
We have, we haven't answered one part of the question of Anton from Citi. Where do you plan to invest your capacity in the long run, in the U.S. or Asia?
It's not one or the other, actually, it's both. I mean, we keep adding new destinations. In about a month, we will open another destination in Americas, Detroit, we'll start to fly. Overall, we want to add like 9, 10 new destinations in Americas, another 10-15 destinations in the Far East. So it's not going to be one or the other, it's going to be the both, both sides of the world in long-haul destinations that we are expecting to grow and looking into new destinations or partnerships, as I answered in the earlier question.
Murat, I think our time is up. Sultan is asking additional question, but I will follow up with him later. I would like to thank all of our analysts for their participation, and if you have any further questions, you can get in touch with us anytime. Thank you.
Thank you, speakers. Thank you, gentlemen, for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's webcast call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.