Istanbul Airport

Istanbul Airport is one of the largest and most important airports in the world and the primary hub for Turkish Airlines. IST handles around 80 million passengers per year and sits about 22 miles north of central Istanbul. The airport opened in 2018 to replace Istanbul Atatürk Airport, which was the previous primary airport and had been constrained by its central location and lack of expansion capacity. The new IST inherited the IATA code from Atatürk and took over most commercial operations. Turkish Airlines operates one of the most extensive international networks of any carrier in the world from IST, with direct flights to more countries than almost any other airline. The airport's role as a transit hub between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East has grown substantially since the new facility opened. IST has a single enormous terminal building with multiple piers and is designed to eventually handle more than 200 million passengers per year across multiple phases of construction.