Antalya International Airport

Antalya International Airport (AYT) is Turkey's third-busiest airport by passenger volume and — uniquely among the global top fifty — overwhelmingly a seasonal leisure operation, with July and August traffic exceeding triple the January baseline. It handled 39.6M passengers in 2024, a record that placed it ahead of IST in single-month August throughput and made it one of the busiest summer airports in the world. Situated 13 km (8 mi) northeast of central Antalya at 177 ft (54 m) elevation, the airport is the gateway to the Turkish Riviera, a 640 km coastline strip whose tourism receipts underwrite a significant portion of Turkey's service-sector GDP. AYT operates two parallel runways (18L/36R and 18R/36L, both 11,155 ft) and three passenger terminals: T1 (international), T2 (international, opened 2005), and the Domestic Terminal. The combined layout supports 58 movements per hour and, in peak summer, routinely hosts charter and low-cost widebody rotations from Condor, TUI fly, Sunclass Airlines, Corendon, SunExpress, and Pegasus. A EUR 1.3 billion concession extension awarded to Fraport-TAV in 2022 includes full reconstruction of T1 and a new capacity for 80M annual passengers by 2034. AYT's route network skews heavily northern European: Germany, the UK, Russia, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Poland dominate frequency tables. Chartered capacity from Russian carriers — especially Azur Air and Nordwind — has given AYT a post-2022 role as one of the few remaining airports offering regular nonstop service between Russia and a Mediterranean tourist coast. The airport also serves as a key relief field for Istanbul-bound traffic during fog and weather events in the Marmara region.