Istanbul Atatürk Airport


Istanbul Atatürk Airport is a general aviation and cargo airport in Istanbul. It used to be an intercontinental passenger hub and closed to commercial passenger flights on 6 April 2019 when all flights were transferred to the new Istanbul Airport. Since then, the airport is open only for cargo, maintenance, general aviation, air taxis, business flights and state and diplomatic aircraft, while commercial passenger flights are all handled at the newly built Istanbul Airport.

History

First opened in 1912 as a military airfield, it is located on the European side of the city, west of the city centre. The airport was originally named Yeşilköy Airport. In the 1980s, it was renamed Istanbul Atatürk International Airport in honour of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. It served more than 60 million passengers in 2015, making it the 11th-busiest airport in the world in terms of total passenger traffic and the 10th-busiest in the world in terms of international passenger traffic. In 2017, it was Europe's 5th-busiest airport after London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt Airport and Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, having fallen from third place after a decline in passengers due to security fears.
Istanbul Atatürk Airport was replaced in regards to commercial passenger functions by the newly constructed Istanbul Airport, in April 2019, in order to meet Istanbul's growing domestic and international air traffic demand as a source, destination and transit point. Both airports were used in parallel for five months from late 2018, with the new airport gradually expanding to serve more domestic and regional destinations. On 6 April 2019, Atatürk's IST IATA airport code was inherited by Istanbul Airport and Atatürk Airport was assigned the code ISL after the full transfer of all scheduled passenger activities to the new airport was completed. The final commercial flight, Turkish Airlines Flight 54, left Atatürk Airport on 6 April 2019 at 2.44am for Singapore.

Facilities

Defunct passenger terminals

Istanbul Atatürk Airport featured two passenger terminals linked to each other. The former Domestic Terminal is the older and smaller of the two terminals and exclusively handled domestic flights within Turkey. It featured its own check-in and airside facilities on the upper floor, with twelve departure gates equipped with jet bridges., and five baggage reclaim belts on the ground level. The former International Terminal was inaugurated in 2000 and used for all international flights. It featured a large main hall containing eight check-in isles and a wide range of airside facilities such as shops and restaurant, 34 gates equipped with jetbridges and 7 bus-boarding stands. The arrivals floor had 11 baggage reclaim belts. In addition, there is a general aviation Terminal to the northwest of the passenger terminals.

Cargo Terminal

The airport features a dedicated cargo terminal including facilities for the handling of radioactive and refrigerated freight.

Other Facilities

Passenger

As of April 2019, all passenger operations have been relocated to the new Istanbul Airport.

Cargo

As of July 2020, the following cargo airlines serve the airport on a scheduled basis:

Statistics

Below is the passenger data and development for Istanbul Atatürk Airport for the years 2002–2018:
YearDomestic
passengers		Passenger
% change		International
passenger		Passenger
% change		Total
passenger		Passenger
% change		World rank
international		World rank
total
201819,170,141248,811,3051067,981,446610th17th
201719,450,347244,277,101763,727,448511th15th
201619,099,874141,019,341260,119,215211th14th
201519,375,402441,947,3271061,322,729810th11th
201418,754,002938,200,7881256,954,790119th13th
201317,224,1051334,096,7701451,320,8751410th18th
201215,281,32129,717,19644,998,50813th21st
201113,604,35223,847,83537,452,18717th28th
201011,800,99920,344,62032,145,61919th37th
200911,393,64518,363,73929,757,384
200811,484,06317,069,06928,553,132
20079,595,92313,600,30623,196,229
20069,091,69312,174,28121,265,974
20057,512,28211,781,48719,293,769
20045,430,92510,169,67615,600,601
20033,196,0458,908,26812,104,342
20022,851,4878,506,20411,357,691

Istanbul Atatürk Airport ranked 17th in ACI statistics at the end of 2011 in terms of international traffic with almost 24 million international passengers. It ranked 29th in the world in terms of total passenger traffic with over 37.4 million passengers in 2011. Its total traffic within the last decade more than tripled, and its international traffic quadrupled.

Accidents and incidents