On October 29, 2018, President Erdogan opened a new airport in Istanbul, which will become the largest air harbor in the world by the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. But already now its scale, design solution and technological innovations amaze with its scale, as well as the prospect of increasing passenger traffic up to 200 million people per year and the fabulous amount spent on its construction.
On the 95th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, a grand opening of a new airport took place in Istanbul with the participation of Turkish President Erdogan. The event was attended by official representatives of 50 countries of the world, including the heads of some states. Of course, the opening is symbolic, because at first there will be only a few flights a day, but over time, according to the plan of the Turkish leadership, it will become the largest airport in the world. Now this position is occupied by the sky pier Hartsfield-Jackson, located in Atlanta (USA), which receives about 100 million passengers a year.
The new airport is located on the Black Sea coast, at a distance of 35 km from the city center and by 2023 will occupy almost 7, 7 hectares of land. For this entire powerful air structure, about $ 11.7 billion was allocated from the state treasury.
Upon completion of construction, the airport will become not only the largest, but also the most technologically advanced in the world. After all, it is planned to install about 3 thousand screens and monitors in it, advanced technologies will be introduced, including A-CDM (automatic decision-making system), VR (virtual reality), smart kiosks, automatic queue management systems, self-service baggage drop-off counters, automatic turnstiles at the gates and other innovations.
The new giant will not implement voice alerts, so it will join the ranks of "quiet" airports, so you will not hear announcements of check-in or start of landing. The only exception will be sudden changes or abnormal situations. Pleasant news awaits passengers arriving from the EU and some other countries - they are excluded from security control when transferring to other flights.
It should be noted that the interior design is based on oriental traditions and motives. Take the tulip tower, which is not only the main flight control center, but also the main element of the architectural composition. By the way, the project of this tower won the main International Architectural Prize in 2016.
Not only will it attract attention and decorate such a busy air dock, but also 313 domes that make up the structure's ceiling. The project has an interesting concept of a gallery of Duty Free shops, which are similar to the colorful streets of Istanbul.
Naturally, such a giant will be launched in stages. Currently, there are only two operational runways with parallel backup runways. In the future, their number will increase to six. It is planned to install more than 500 check-in counters, 228 passport control booths, 143 bridges, more than 20 thousand seats for passengers in waiting rooms at the airport.
The new airport plans to create 5 business lounges, which will be divided into categories of elite passengers: for VIPs, for customers with business class tickets, for passengers who often use airport services, and so on.
Naturally, buses were launched that will take travelers from the city to the airport, and by 2020 a new metro line will be launched. They also organized huge parking lots for 40 thousand places, half of which will be covered.
Considering the huge areas, passengers will have to run pretty much, because the distance from the entrance to the terminal to the nearest boarding gate is 500 meters, and to get to the most distant one, you will have to walk 1.5 km. Part of this path can be overcome with the help of a moving stepless path (travolator), which will slightly speed up and facilitate the path for pedestrians. Although with the planned passenger traffic (200 million people per year), it is not known whether the systems will cope.
The new airport will create more comfortable conditions for passengers, as well as significantly increase the number of flights to Istanbul, which will supplant competing Asian airlines.
The new Turkish air harbor, fortunately, is no exception, but only a continuation of the large-scale global design and construction of airports of fantastic scale and technical equipment … Some of them have been successfully functioning for a long time, while others are waiting in the wings to surprise the whole world.