Istanbul's new airport was officially opened on time - on 29 October 2018, the 95th anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's proclamation of the Republic in 1923. However, it was not really finished at that time. The big move from the old to the new airport of the Turkish megacity took place in April 2019.
Since then, more than 64 million passengers have traveled through Istanbul Airport with more than 415,000 flights. They all took off and landed on the first two north-south runways. Soon there will be another possibility. On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially opened the third parallel runway.
To celebrate, three planes of home carrier Turkish Airlines took off simultaneously into the Istanbul sky. On June, 18, the third runway of Istanbul Airport will be officially opened to traffic. In the final stage of construction, the airport will have six main runways and two auxiliary runways, which means up to eight runways.
Thanks to the third runway, landing times will be reduced «by an average of seven minutes and take-off times by an average of four minutes,» according to the airport. The capacity for aircraft movements per hour will increase from 80 to 120, and IATA is now able to handle 2800 aircraft movements per day. This is more than any other European airport, according to the operating company.
