Turkmenistan's state civil aviation service Türkmenhowaýollary increased its volume of work and services by 18.3% in the first ten months of 2026, reaching 118.3% of last year's level. The January–October results were presented at a meeting of Turkmenistan's Cabinet of Ministers on 5 November.
The country's transport and communications complex as a whole reached 113.6% of last year's level, a rise of 13.6%. By service, the figures were: rail transport 107.4%, road transport 114.9%, sea and river transport 101.4%, and communications 115.1%.
Aviation therefore showed the highest growth of any area in the complex and stayed 4.7 percentage points above the industry average.
The indicator reflects the volume of work and services performed by the service. It is not passenger traffic or airline revenue, so it cannot be used to judge the number of passengers carried.
Turkmenistan rarely publishes separate aviation statistics, so such monthly summaries remain one of the few open benchmarks for assessing the sector's dynamics. For aviation suppliers, tour operators and investors, it is a signal that demand for Turkmen civil aviation services is growing faster than for other modes of transport in the country.
Our assessment: aviation outpacing rail and sea transport points to a shift of transport load towards air, but without data on passengers and flights the scale of that shift cannot be measured. This is the view of flycentralasia.