Pegasus Airlines has announced its traffic data for the first half of 2015, with the airline carrying 10.17 million guests for the period.

This translates to a year-on-year increase of 10 per cent, while the seat capacity was 13.04 million, a rise of 12 per cent compared with the same period last year.

With a fleet of 64 aircraft by the end of June, it had completed 125,156 block hours of flights at an average overall load factor of 78 per cent during the first half of 2015.

Pegasus Airlines general manager Sertac Haybat explained: “Following our double digit growth during 2014, we’re very happy to have also captured this trend during the first half of 2015 given the relative slowness for the aviation industry during this time.

“We marked another important milestone at the close of this period when we carried more than ten million guests during the first half of the year for the first time ever in our company’s history.

“We aim to continue this trend of growth during the second half of the year, when we will also continue to take our guests to their chosen destinations at the best-value fares.”

Pegasus’ traffic data, according to the Public Disclosure Platform, show that during January 1st-June 30th 2015 10.17 million guests were carried by them with 6.33 million on domestic routes and 3.84 million on international routes.

During the same period a total of 70,411 flights were made with 41,534 domestic flights and 28,877 international flights beyond Turkey – representing a year-on-year increase of 12.2 per cent compared with the same period last year.

Pegasus added the new destinations of London Gatwick, Oslo and Kutaisi to its network as well as Kastamonu in Turkey during the first half of 2015, making a network of 91 destinations in 37 countries with 31 domestic and 60 international destinations.