AtlasGlobal (Istanbul Airport) has announced that it will suspend all operations until December 21, effective immediately from the date of the announcement, November 26.

In a letter to business partners, which was published by the Turkish travel news website TurizmGuncel.com, the airline elaborated that it had to suspend operations to curb losses and restructure. The airline further said that its current predicament dated back to 2015-2016 when a string of terrorist attacks and a failed coup d'etat in Turkey caused a slump in travel demand to the country.

"In addition, the rapid and aggressive fluctuations in the Turkish lira in the second half of 2018 negatively affected the dynamics of the domestic market, which led to a decrease in the demand for air travel. In spite of the adversities, in the second half of 2018 [...] a recovery process was initiated and our operations became profitable again," the airline said.

It added, however, that the recovery came too late to curb the losses it had suffered during the crisis. AtlasGlobal also singled out increased costs associated with operating from Istanbul Airport as compared to Istanbul Atatürk.

The airline said it would inform its business partners about future steps on December 16. It intends to resume ticket sales on that day.

AtlasGlobal told its staff that it would now be operating with the "minimum number of personnel", with almost all of the employees having been sent on leave until December 16.

The airline's last flight to land at Istanbul was KK1291 from Erbil, was operated by A320-200 TC-ATT (msn 1624), which touched down at the Turkish gateway at 2150L.

According to the ch-aviation fleets module, AtlasGlobal operated one A320-200, nine active A321-200s, and three A330-200 as of November 26. It also wet-leased two A320-200s from its Ukrainian subsidiary AtlasGlobal UA (Lviv), of which one (owned by GECAS) has been ferried to Montpellier for storage on November 21, Flightradar24 ADS-B data shows.

Out of AtlasGlobal's fleet, one A321 owned by AerCap was already ferried to Goodyear and two owned by GECAS to Montpellier. The Turkish leisure specialist leases all of its active aircraft.

The company also owns the Kazakh business charter airline Jet One (Almaty International).