Airports Istanbul Airport celebrates opening
The new Istanbul Airport has officially been opened with an opening ceremony. President Erdoğan attended the opening.
On the day of Turkey´s 95th anniversary of the foundation of the Republic, the new Istanbul Airport was ceremoniously opened by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He stated, that the airport will be named after Istanbul. According to reports, the current IATA code for the airport is “ISL”, but will become “IST”, when the transfer from Istanbul Atatürk Airport is completed this December.
The invitations of more than 50 guests of honour from 18 countries represent the importance of the airport for the country. Among the guests were chiefs of states from countries like Qatar, Albania, Serbia, Sudan, Kosovo and Macedonia.
President Erdoğan stated: "Turkey, with the Istanbul Airport going into service, has become the most important transit hub [...] The Istanbul Airport, with its architecture, construction, operation and financing, is a project which is a source of pride for Turkey and sets an example to the world.”
He hopes, that the airport will use its geographical advantageous location, as Istanbul is located between Asia and Europe and is considered to be the axis between the north-south and the east-west.
"The Istanbul Airport connects 60 countries and $20-trillion economies across the vast area it serves,” Erdoğan added. “With the Istanbul Airport going into service, the European air space will need to be restructured. Istanbul will now become the major transfer hub, which will greatly change the intercontinental flight routes.”
The Istanbul Airport started operations with handling a couple of regional flights. Over the coming months, the traffic will then be gradually transferred to the new airport. This will enable the airport to slowly getting used to the operations.
Starting on November 1, 2018, five daily flights will start to arrive and depart from Istanbul Airport. Turkish Airlines will serve Antalya, Ankara, Baku, Izmir and Ercan.
Initially, the construction work started on June 7, 2014, when the groundbreaking ceremony was celebrated, but got delayed until May 2015. Istanbul Airport is located in the north-east of Istanbul and was designed to handle 150 million passengers annually.
Source © tccb.gov.tr
It has been announced that the official opening will be in April, 2019. There are test flights as of the beginning of 2019. It is a huge airport with state-of-art technology. The only downside is that it is far from the city center and there is no metro, train or subway. In order to get to the city, I have used a company called Al's Taxi Istanbul via istanbulrides.com.
There should be other options to get to the city center if it is going to be fully used instead of Ataturk Airport.