İstanbul Airport
Istanbul · Turkey · Europe/Istanbul
Route Intelligence
Runways
Haul Mix
Geographic Context
10 Nearest Airports
ATC Frequencies3
Top Aircraft Types
Sample Routes
Airline Records in Dataset67
Data Notes & Community Corrections5
External Links
Airport HistoryEst. 2018
Istanbul Airport is one of the world's largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, built from scratch in 6 years on the European shore of Istanbul. It replaced Atatürk Airport as Turkey's primary hub and Turkish Airlines' base of operations.
Ground broken at Arnavutköy site on the European shore of Istanbul. The project covers 76.5 km² — larger than many small countries.
Airport opens on October 29, 2018 — Republic Day — with one terminal and two runways. First commercial flight operated by Turkish Airlines to Ankara.
All airline operations transferred from Atatürk Airport on April 6, 2019. Atatürk Airport closes permanently. IST becomes Turkey's sole major international hub.
In its first full operational year, Istanbul Airport serves 76 million passengers, immediately ranking among Europe's busiest airports.
Passenger traffic collapses 70% due to the pandemic. The airport maintains hub operations throughout, never fully closing.
Traffic recovers to pre-pandemic levels. Turkish Airlines expands network aggressively, using IST as a global connecting hub between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
A third runway enters service, increasing capacity. Construction continues on runways 4, 5, and 6 — targeting eventual 150 million passenger capacity.
Editorial content based on public records. Historical passenger figures are approximate.
Reply to @Hammy: No, Istanbul Airport is located in the European Part of Turkey, unlike Sabiha Gokcen Airport, which is located on the Asian side.
The continent for Istanbul Airport is listed as EU, should be AS. Found that in a JOIN SQL query when none of the airport data was coming up. 317457,LTFM,large_airport,"İstanbul Airport" EU,Turkey,TR,"İstanbul Province",TR-34,34, Another consideration is to change all the letter " İ " to the standard letter " I ". Searching for this airport on a standard English keyboard does not find it. For my database application I just do a search and replace on all of them in the csv file. Simple solution.
Since April 2019, it replaced Istanbul Ataturk Airport as Turkey's largest airport. Check out arrivals and departures time tables from İstanbul Airport (IST, LTFM): İstanbul Airport (IST, LTFM) - Arrivals https://flightradar.live/en/flights/eur/tr/istanbul-atatuerk-airport-ist-arrivals/ İstanbul Airport (IST, LTFM) - Departures https://flightradar.live/en/flights/eur/tr/istanbul-atatuerk-airport-ist-departures/
Most scheduled flights moved here from https://ourairports.com/airports/LTBA/ in 2019. If you flew into Istanbul internationally before 2019 (as I have), then you probably landed at LTBA, not here.
Istanbul New Airport ICAO code has been updated. It's approved code is LTFM. Although the database has beed updated at 29 February 2019, ICAO code in the database is not up-to-date.