I spoke with the Snr Gen Mgr Ops Planning two days ago.
The THY deal is signed.
The first aircraft will operate from 1st June on a daily IST-LHR-IST-DXB-IST rotation giving plenty of line training (induction) sectors and good a/c utilisation.
A/c 2 & 3 are planned to start in August when it is anticipated that adequate crews will have been recruited and trained to allow the IST-GRU-EZE-GRU-IST-ICN-IST rotations to start.
Indian DGCA scheduling rules are quite restrictive for long sectors involving multiple timezone changes which gives a higher crewing requirement than might otherwise be expected and is a significant influence on Jet's preference for a 6 weeks on 2 off pattern.
There are 30+ pilots who have been screened and contracts issued but only ONE pilot has, at the time of writing, commenced his ground school induction.
HTH
S.T.