Each week, we reveal the meaning of one acronym or abbreviation from the world of aviation. What does Mayday mean? What do the letters in KLM stand for? Why does every tail number in the United States begin with “US-“?
Today, we’re taking a closer look at the airline with the most destinations worldwide, TURKISH AIRLINES. The name is a long acronym dating back to the days when Istanbul was called Constantinople. We reached out to the company to get an explanation of all these letters and their meaning, but they haven’t answered our request through the online form on their website yet. So we looked it up on Wikipedia.
WOW! The letter T in TURKISH AIRLINES stands for Turkish, referring to Türkiye, a country near Bulgaria. The country was apparently named Turkey until recently, but had to change the name after losing a copyright dispute with turkeys.
This is amazing! So the next time you’re heading out to the spotting area, you can drop this fun fact to the boys with the large cameras. They will be impressed!