Invest News DetailDunya – Türkiye’s civil aviation industry took to the skies in the truest sense of the word in terms of passenger numbers and total turnover in the past decade. According to a report on the sector by the Ministry of Transportation’s General Directorate of Civil Aviation, airline passenger numbers in Türkiye have reached 50 million in 2010 up from 2002’s 8.5 million. The total turnover of airline companies also skyrocketed to USD 12 billion from USD 2.2 billion from 8 years earlier. Backed by the building and reopening of airports in many Anatolian cities and the private sector’s strong entry into the air transportation business, air travel took the lion’s share in the transportation sector’s 8 percent growth in the last 5 years, the report states. It breaks down the share of air, land, sea and rail transportations’ growth rates as 16 percent, 7.6 percent, 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively. The report lays out the last 8 years’ growth in the sector by numbers; the number of aircraft in Turkish airline companies’ inventories has reached 332 from 110 while domestic flight routes limited to 25 destinations have reached 44. Flights to international destinations meanwhile have more than doubled to 157, up from 60 in 2002.