Discovering Istanbul airport

Set to be the world's largest airport, iGA will be capable of hosting up to 200 million passengers annually by 2028

- HANNAH BRANDLER

For years travellers have been using hubs at the likes of F Doha, Dubai and Amsterdam to connect between Europe and Asia, with Istanbul's Ataturk and Sabiha Gokcen airports suffering from congestion and delays despite the city's well-placed location straddling both continents.

Enter Istanbul airport (also known as iGA - Istanbul Grand airport) which began operations in October 2018 and aims to be the world's largest airport once its four phases of construction are complete in 2028.

The airport took over from Ataturk as Istanbul's main airport in April 2019, adopting the IST code as well. It occupies 76.5 million sqm with an "under one roof" design, meaning that there is only one terminal - spanning 1.4 million sqm for both domestic and international departures, plus three independent runways, an air control tower and various facilities. That said, there will be separate terminal buildings for VIPs and private jets in due course.

The airport will have five north-south parallel runways and one east-west runway by 2028, and the capacity to handle 200 million passengers per year - at the moment it has a 90 million capacity. Indeed, it was listed as the busiest airport in Europe (and seventh worldwide) in the ACI's World Airport Traffic Dataset in 2023.

Here we look at the facilities on offer to help guide your way around this vast airport.

Getting here 

Istanbul airport is 53km from Taksim on the European side, and 65km from Kadikoy on the Anatolian side.

The M11 metro operates between Kagithane and Istanbul airport and takes approximately 25 minutes to reach the city centre. This will extend to Gayrettepe station in the city centre soon. Passengers can also use the Havaist and IETT buses.

Getting around