Çukurova International Airport

Çukurova International Airport (COV) is Turkey's newest major airport, purpose-built to serve the Adana-Mersin-Tarsus metropolitan corridor - the country's fifth-largest urban agglomeration. Located in Tarsus district 40 km (25 mi) west of Adana at 35 ft (11 m) elevation on the Çukurova plain, the airport replaced the constrained and inner-city Adana Şakirpaşa Airport (ADA), taking over its scheduled commercial operations from February 2024. Its twin parallel concrete runways 03L/21R and 03R/21L both measure 11,482 ft (3,500 m) and are 197 ft (60 m) wide - significantly larger than the single short runway it replaced - enabling widebody operations at full weight. Built by Turkish contractor TAV Airports in a 25-year build-operate-transfer concession, COV serves 48 routes to 30 destinations on 10 airlines (2026). Scheduled services include Turkish Airlines, Pegasus, AnadoluJet, SunExpress and seasonal European leisure carriers linking Adana to Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Cyprus, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and several Gulf cities, reflecting the Çukurova region's strong Turkish diaspora ties to Germany and the Gulf states. The airport's twin-runway layout and central terminal have initial capacity for 15 million annual passengers, roughly three times the traffic of the airport it replaced. The opening of COV is one of the largest single airport transitions in Turkish aviation history and forms part of the Transport Ministry's strategy to cluster regional hubs around each major Turkish conurbation. The facility also supports agricultural cargo, given the Çukurova plain's status as Turkey's citrus- and cotton-producing heartland. The new airport is sized to support future widebody service to Europe and the Gulf that the constrained Adana airport could never reliably offer, and its twin-runway layout provides redundant capacity during Turkey's strong summer holiday peak. Operations are managed under TAV's established system that also covers Istanbul-Atatürk, Ankara Esenboğa, Izmir Adnan Menderes and Bodrum-Milas - a portfolio which makes COV's commercial systems familiar to Turkish and European carriers from day one.