İstanbul Airport

Istanbul Airport opened in 2018 as a direct replacement for Atatürk Airport (which closed to commercial passenger traffic in 2019), built from scratch on 18,532 acres (7,500 ha) of former forest land north of the city. It was designed to serve as the largest airport in the world by several measures — its eventual final build will support 200M passengers annually across six runways, putting it on course to match or exceed any existing facility. 2024 traffic reached 76.1M. Turkish Airlines runs the entirety of its long-haul operation from IST and serves as the anchor tenant of the 1.3-million-square-meter main terminal, currently the largest airport terminal in the world under a single roof. The airline flies to 309 direct destinations from Istanbul — more than any other carrier on earth — which makes IST the world's most-connected airport by route count. Its geographic position straddling Europe and Asia allows Turkish to run a unique sixth-freedom hub: almost any city pair between Europe and the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, or South Asia can be routed efficiently through Istanbul. The airport is still expanding — five runways are operational as of 2026, with a sixth planned. The terminal concept uses a single linear passenger building connected to remote piers via internal transit, which is why walking distances can be significant. Istanbul's older Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW) on the Asian side continues to serve low-cost and domestic traffic, but IST handles the overwhelming majority of long-haul flights.