Saturday, 6 April, 2019, Istanbul, Republic of Turkey: the last commercial passenger flight took off from Atatürk Airport with convoys of trucks ferrying thousands of tonnes of equipment across the city to a giant new airport, which Turkey plans to make the largest globally.
The new Istanbul Airport, costing some $8 billion and one of several mega-projects championed by President Tayyip Erdoğan, shall initially be able to handle 90 million passengers a year, close to the world’s largest existing airport capacity. Aviation authorities envisage to expand that capacity to expand to 200 million.
Overnight the final commercial passenger flight from Atatürk took off for Singapore, a departure which Transport Minister Mehmet Turhan labelled as historic. The new airport, which was formally opened nearly six months ago, however, has been handling less than 20 flights a day, inaugurated its new chapter on Saturday afternoon with a domestic flight taking off for the capital Ankara.
For further information:
https://www.istanbulhavalimani.com/en
