Istanbul Airport

stanbul Airport (Turkish: İstanbul Havalimanı) is the larger of two international airports serving Istanbul, Turkey. It is located in the Arnavutköy district on the European side of the city.

All scheduled commercial passenger flights were transferred from Atatürk Airport to Istanbul Airport on 6 April 2019, following the closure of Atatürk Airport for scheduled passenger flights. The IATA airport code IST was also transferred to the new airport.

It served more than 64 million passengers in 2022, making it the busiest airport in Europe and 7th-busiest airport in the world in terms of total passenger traffic and, by serving more than 48 million international passengers, the 5th-busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic according to ACI World traffic values. It serves up to 114 countries and is the hub for Turkish Airlines.

History
Atatürk Airport was one of the busiest airports in Europe. Since 2013, it had ranked among the five busiest airports in Europe by passenger traffic. In 2017, Atatürk Airport and Sabiha Gökçen, Istanbul's other international airport, handled over 100 million passengers combined.[9] By comparison, the six London-area airports serve more than 150 million passengers a year, while the three Paris-area airports serve around 100 million passengers a year.

As Atatürk Airport was hemmed in by the city on three sides and the sea of Marmara on another, it was unable to expand to meet the growing demands placed on it. Sabiha Gökçen was also at capacity. The decision was taken to build a new airport, well away from the city to ensure ample space.

Location
It was decided to construct the new airport at the intersection of roads to Arnavutköy, Göktürk, and Çatalca, north of central Istanbul and between the Black Sea coast towns of Yeniköy [tr], Tayakadın and Akpınar. The area is a 7,600-hectare (19,000-acre) region near Lake Terkos. Some 6,172 hectares (15,250 acres) of this area was state-owned forest. The distance between Istanbul Airport and Atatürk Airport is approximately 35 km (22 mi). The area encompassed old open-pit coal mines, which were later filled with soil.

According to the Environmental Impact Assessment (ÇED) report published in April 2013, there were a total of 2,513,341 trees in the area and 657,950 of them would need to be cut indispensably, while 1,855,391 trees would be moved to new places. However, the Ministry of Forest and Water Management claimed the exact number of trees cut and moved would only be revealed after construction was complete.

Construction
Construction of the airport was divided over four phases. When all stages are completed, the airport will have the capacity to serve 200 million yearly passengers, which would at that time have made it the world's biggest airport. The cost of the project was estimated at €7 billion, without accounting for the cost of financing.

London-based firm Grimshaw Architects headed the design team, which mostly consisted of British architects. Others involved in the design were Norway-based Haptic Architects and Turkish architects Fonksiyon and TAM/Kiklop.

A tender was made for the construction as well as for operating the airport. Bidding for these tenders took place on 3 May 2013. Of the eligible companies, four Turkish and two foreign contenders took part in the bidding process. The Turkish joint venture consortium of Cengiz-Kolin-Limak-Mapa-Kalyon won the tender and were obliged to pay the government €26.142 billion including value-added tax for a 25-year lease starting from 2018. The completion date of the construction's first stage was officially set for 2018 – 42 months after the finalization of the tender's approval.

The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 7 June 2014, though construction only started in May 2015 after the land was officially handed over.

The inauguration of the airport took place on the planned date of 29 October 2018. It was reported that the first test landing at the airport would take place on 26 February 2018; however, the first landing took place on 20 June 2018. Testing of navigational and electronic systems with DHMİ aircraft had begun on 15 May 2018.

The control tower is in the shape of the Turkish national flower, the tulip.