Everywhere around the world in the key hotspots its quite clear to see that the Tourist Industry has bounced back well after the restrictions that were forced upon it over the last two years, and in most cases tourist numbers have increased significantly, which as you’ll have seen put quite a bit of pressure on both airports and airlines during the busy summer months.
For Turkiye, and in particular Istanbul, the first 9 months of this year have proven to be extremely popular, with more than 70m passengers passing through Istanbul Airport & Sabiha Gokcen Airport, which is an increase of about 27m when compared to the same period last year.
Both domestic and international passenger numbers are up, and though in particular for Istanbul’s second airport domestic travel was slightly down, International numbers were nearly double. Istanbul’s main airport received over 12m passengers on domestic flights and over 35m on International flights whilst Sabiha Gokcen Airport saw 11.4m domestic passengers and 11.2m Internationals.
Istanbul Airport became a major infrastructure hub since the closure of Ataturk in 2019, and it’s now one of the largest airports in the world in terms of total passenger numbers. Just in September of this year, it’s three operational runways handled over 46,000 flights, served 110 countries & covered 463 routes, plus when all the phases are finished it will be able to accommodate 200 million passengers throughout the year. Sabiha Gokcen Airport is in the Asian Part of Istanbul, and although it has been dwarfed by the new Istanbul Airport it’s still one of the biggest in the country. Currently it can handle 25m passengers per year, serves 59 airlines, and flies to 164 destinations.
