Istanbul Airport will open its third runway on 18 June. CEO Kadri Samsunlu announced this in a press conference earlier this week. The third runway should be fully operational in the first half of 2020. With this runway, the capacity of the airport can be increased from 80 aircrafts per hour to 120 aircrafts per hour. The new runway would also reduce taxiing times by 50 percent.
Istanbul Airport 1 year in operation
The news that the third runway will be put into operation on June 18 comes exactly one year after the opening of Istanbul Airport. In the first year of operation Istanbul Airport received 74 different airlines. More than 64 million passengers arrived at the airport. Samsunlu is very satisfied with these figures. According to him, these figures are very good despite the crisis surrounding the Boeing 737 MAX and the recent COVID-19 outbreak.
In 2028 a capacity of 200 million passengers
Istanbul Airport currently has a capacity of 90 million passengers. The goal of the airport is to eventually be able to handle 200 million passengers. The construction of the airport will take at least until 2028. Eventually, there will have to be 6 runways and Istanbul Airport wants to offer flights to more than 300 different destinations. In 2028 Istanbul Airport wants to be the largest airport in the world. According to Samsunlu, the construction is going according to plan.
(c) Photo: Istanbul Airport
