Istanbul airport
 

The start of operation of the new airport of Istanbul may take place on April 1st 2019.
That seems to be the result of a meeting of last Monday.

The start of operation of the new airport of Istanbul will NOT take place on April 1st 2019.
It has been postponed again.

Too many problems with the new airport in addition to the ethical and environmental issues.

- Not enough land fill in order to cut costs causing flooding
- Delayed payments
- Construction joint venture Partnership may dissolve. One of the four partners either left or is trying to sell share.
- rail system will not be finished before 2021.
- Taxi costs expected to be about $40-50 to city center. (current airport has rail system and taxi costs $15 or less.
- I am betting that there will be more bugs and that the new airport will not be fully operational in 2019 although they may be forced to have another partial opening on
orders.

The Brandenburg Airport would have a good company :-)

I really enjoy Turkish Airways in the air.....but Ataturk Airport for Transfer passengers can be testing.

LancasterLzad, if you think Ataturk airport can be taxing, consider the potential disruptions due to wind at fog at the new airport.

Here's an assessment of the situation:

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ori...iefly%20Turkey

Oh......I believe you, no fear about that. Purely my experience of Ataturk, frying pan and fire come to mind. We only used it because we were transiting with Turkish Airways flights from UK to Skopje [Macedonia].

Normally, for a visit to Turkey we'd fly direct to one of the Turkish regional airports.

airport
 

yeah, it might be greater that Istanbul international

I wonder why some posters think or believe that the new airport will be good or greater than IST in view of some of the additional risks and the cost of transfer and declare their view before seeing it?

In any case, I recommend that those travelers to Turkey who wish to visit Cappadocia, Fethiye, Ephesus, Antalya, Trabzon, et.al. would do well to connect upon arrival or at departure so that they do not
pay an extra $100 or more for transfer to Istanbul city center.

Aside from risks and costs of which I know nothing, I think it depends on Turkish' strategy whether point-to-point traffic to Istanbul is a priority or the expansion of the location as a hub for connecting flights to Asia.

Istanbul is a very convenient place to change from feeder flights from West/Central Europe to long-haul flights to Southeast Asia or South/ Southern Africa. You usually change planes later at night, but not at 3am like in Abu Dhabi or Dubai. I like that the flight to IST already gets me into the "right direction" (instead of flying to London or Amsterdam and having to go back East). And it cuts the total travel time into two perfect slices, a relatively short hop within Europe, and a longer night flight with enough time to sleep, for example to Bangkok or Singapur.
In addition, you have tons of nonstop services from anywhere else in Europe to many other airports in Turkey than just Istanbul. Like from my airports to at least Izmir, Antalya, Ankara and Gaziantep, in addition to both Istanbul airports.

So I guess that when planning the new airport, the function as a hub for international to international connections has been regarded as more important than the function as port of entry for the city of Istanbul or to Turkey.. but, as I wrote, just guessing...

Cowboy, you are right in all you write. The new airport will start with same capacity as existing one and expand to double the capacity at some point in future.

Those of us who live here just wish that
- the old airport was expanded instead. It was possible to expand it 50 %.
- the old airport was kept in use for at least some of the local flights
- new airport was not put in operation until the light rail system was finished

All of that besides the lousy design, construction and cost and the fact that Turkish government contracted to pay all costs and profits to the contractors within a short period of time
based on an imaginary number of flights, and all that from the taxes that everyone in Turkey pays;

And that it destroyed a huge trat of forested land and some of the water supplies for the city and fot the remaining forests and wild life.
herds of Wild boar were seen swimming in the Black Sea and the Bosphorus trying to find sanctuary elsewhere.

I am so sorry to hear that. Do you know what is going to happen to the area where the old airport is now?

Katepcross, thanks for your interest. The political declaration was that it would become a national park, but the popular expectation is that it would end up with high rise resıdence and office buildings and a large mall

There is also another airport in Istanbul, on the Asian side which is underutilized and has possibilities of expansion. (Sabiha Gokcen)

The big move starts tonight and will finish early morning Sunday April 6.
A huge number of rigs closing of traffic for 18 hours on some major routes

THY requests domestic passengers to arrive two hours before and international passengers to arrive three hours before their flights.

Here;s what I tweeted on the time and cost of using the new airport fo short domestic trips :

New #IstanbulAirport will result in opportunities for car rental companies. Istanbul-Ankara flight will cost about TL1,400 including taxi fares and take 6-7 hours. Driving will be 5-6 hrs. and daily diesel car rental plus fuel will be about TL800.

I see it's almost 50km from the new airport to Sultanahmet via O6-O7-O3 motorways. So, taxi fare 130TL? At 4TL starting price + 2.5TL per km. Minimum.

The nearest Metro stations are MetroKent, Başakşehir, 28km from airport at the start of the M3 line, and Mescid-İ Selam, 30km, start of T4 line.
T4 line is probably better, with only 1 change (Topkapi), en route to Sultanahmet.

... if one were ever to want to go that way.

I see that the train from Istanbul (well Söğütlüçeşme) to Ankara only takes just over four hours now. Probably a better bet than flying?

The buses from the new airport seem to be run by Havaist with hourly departures to Sultanahmet costing 18TL. You need to buy an Istanbulkart to pay for it.

On Friday my daughter and family were delayed five hours due to wind while many arrivals were diverted to other airports. We had no wind to speak of in istanbul.
I am starting to agree with those who wrote against the new airport.

The parking was a mess also with bad signage while the card payment machines which were also hidden away at remote places were not working and we spent half an hour trying to find a manned pay station..

We have had two more mishaps at the new airport.

The first was a huge flock of migrating birds delaying and disrupting flights.

The second one occurred today, when plane hit a (probably misplaced) electricity pole, fortunately toppling it rather than breaking its own wing.