Ataturk International Airport

Atatürk International Airport (IATA: IST, ICAO: LTBA) (Turkish: Atatürk Uluslararasi Havalimani) is the major international airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Located in Yesilköy, on the European side of the city, it is 15 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of the city centre. The airport is named in honor of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first President of the modern Turkish republic.
IATA: IST - ICAO: LTBA 
Summary 
Airport type Public 
Operator TAV Airport Management 
Serves Istanbul 
Elevation AMSL 163 ft (50 m) 
Coordinates 40°58′37″N, 28°48′53″E 
Runways 
Direction Length Surface 
ft m 
18L/36R 9,842 3,000 Concrete 
18R/36L 9,842 3,000 Concrete 
06/24 7,546 2,300 Concrete 

Terminals

Atatürk Airport at night.There are two passenger terminals, one International and one Domestic (Terminal A and Terminal B), and a Cargo terminal (Terminal C). Inaugurated in 2001, the international terminal is an efficient and modern terminal. Before the new terminal opened, a single terminal handled both domestic and international traffic and was very crowded. The domestic terminal, now relieved of international traffic, is spacious, despite its 1970s design.

The airport terminals are operated by TAV (Tepe-Akfen-Ventures) since January 2000, who has invested 600 Million US$ since 1998. In 2005 TAV has won the concession agreement to operate the Atatürk for 15.5 years at a record breaking amount of 3 Billion US$, which also represents the highest figure for such a privatization project in Turkey, Eastern Europe, Middle East, CIS and North Africa.

Traffic

Atatürk still faces capacity issues; it ranks somewhere between thirty-first and fortieth in the world by cargo traffic and handled over 573,000 tonnes of cargo traffic in 2004 and was expected to handle 615,000 tonnes of cargo in 2005.

Below is the passenger data for Istanbul for the years 2002-2006:
Passenger Data Year Domestic International Total 
2006 9,091,693 12,474,281 21,265,974 
2005 7,512,282 11,781,487 19,293,769 
2004 5,430,925 10,169,676 15,600,601 
2003 3,126,074 8,978,268 12,104,342 
2002 2,851,487 8,506,204 11,357,690 
In four years, from 2002 to 2006, domestic travel tripled and international traffic has increased almost 50%. Its rated capacity of 14 million international passengers per year and 7 million domestic passengers per year was barely enough for the demand in 2006. Istanbul metropolitan area is expected to have a demand of 25 million international passengers and 25 million domestic passengers annually by the year 2012.

Atatürk shares traffic with Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, which is on the Asian side of Istanbul. The two airports both provide domestic and international service to the Istanbul area, but booming passenger demands (as well as the physical impossibility of expanding Atatürk) suggest that a 4th airport will be required by 2007, as the Hezarfen Airport is not big enough to support international flights. This new airport is planned to be located north of Istanbul in Kemerburgaz which is close to the Levent business district. There is no traffic data available for Sabiha Gokcen Airport from DHMI [2] yet.

Services

Free WLAN is available at the international arrival area (after customs control) and in the international departure area (after passport control).

Incidents and accidents

Wikinews has news related to:
Major fire breaks out at Istanbul airport2006 fire: At about 3:30 p.m. (local time, GMT+3) on May 24, 2006, a fire broke out in the Cargo terminal (Terminal C) building, about 1km away from the International and Domestic terminal buildings, billowing clouds of black smoke and forcing the suspension of some air traffic. Local officials have reportedly attributed the fire to sparks from a soldering iron. Three people were treated for smoke inhalation. The fire was under control after 90 minutes of work by firemen and accompanying two Bombardier CL-215 fire-fighting planes which were hired two days previously by the Metropolitan Municipality.

On 23 March 2007 an Ariana Afghan Airlines Airbus A300B4 (YA-BAD) after a flight from Kabul via Ankara, landed at Atatürk International Airport, overran the runway and came to a halt resting on its right wing. The weather at the time was poor with rain and gusting winds. The aircraft is being dismantled.

Airlines and destinations

Atatürk International Airport international departures/arrivals terminal

Scheduled Airlines

The following airlines have scheduled operations to and from Atatürk International Airport:
Adria Airways (Ljubljana) 
Aeroflot (Moscow-Sheremetyevo) 
Aeroflot-Don (Rostov, Sochi) 
Aerosvit Airlines (Kiev-Boryspil) 
Air Algérie (Algiers) 
Air Astana (Almaty, Atyrau) 
Air France (Paris-Charles de Gaulle) 
Air Malta (Malta) 
Air Moldova (Chisinău) 
airBaltic (Riga) 
Albanian Airlines (Tirana) 
Alitalia (Milan-Malpensa, Rome-Fiumicino) 
Ariana Afghan Airlines (Kabul) 
Armavia (Yerevan) 
Atlasjet (Adiyaman, Ankara, Antalya, Çanakkale, Dalaman, Edremit, Erbil, Ercan, 
Erzincan, Isparta, Izmir, Kahramanmaras, Kars, Kavala, London-Stansted, Malatya, 
Manchester, Mykonos, Niš, Sanliurfa, Siirt, Sivas, Tokat, Trabzon, Usak, Van) 
Austrian Airlines (Vienna) 
Azerbaijan Airlines (Baku) 
Belavia (Minsk) 
B&H Airlines (Sarajevo, Mostar) 
Blue Air (Bucharest-Baneasa) 
Blue Wings (Berlin-Tegel, Bremen, Cologne/Bonn, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, 
Munich, Nürnberg, Stuttgart) 
British Airways (London-Heathrow) 
Buraq Air (Tripoli) 
Cyprus Turkish Airlines (Ercan, Frankfurt) 
Czech Airlines (Prague) 
Delta Air Lines (New York-JFK) 
DonbassAero (Donetsk) 
Dniproavia (Dnepropetrovsk) 
EgyptAir (Cairo) 
Emirates (Dubai) 
FlyLal (Vilnius) 
Free Bird Airlines 
Gulf Air (Bahrain) 
Iberia (Barcelona, Madrid) 
Iran Air (Tabriz, Tehran-Mehrabad) 
Jat Airways (Belgrade) 
Kenya Airways (Cairo, Nairobi) 
Kish Air (Tehran-Mehrabad) 
KLM (Amsterdam) 
Korean Air (Seoul-Incheon) 
Kuban Airlines (Krasnodar) 
Libyan Airways (Benghazi, Tripoli) 
LOT Polish Airlines (Warsaw) 
LTU International (Düsseldorf) 
Lufthansa (Frankfurt, Munich) 
Malaysia Airlines (Kuala Lumpur) 
Malév Hungarian Airlines (Budapest) 
MAT Macedonian Airlines (Skopje) 
Middle East Airlines (Beirut) 
Motor Sich Airlines (Zaporizhzhia) 
Olympic Airlines (Athens, Thessaloniki) 
Onur Air (Adana, Amsterdam, Antalya, Bodrum, Dalaman, Diyarbakir, Düsseldorf, 
Erzurum, Gaziantep, Izmir, Kayseri, Konya, Malatya, Mardin, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, 
Samsun, Trabzon, Zurich) 
Pegasus Airlines 
Pegasus Airlines operated by Izair (Izmir) 
Pakistan International Airlines (Frankfurt, Islamabad) 
Polet Airlines (Voronezh) 
Rossiya (St. Petersburg) 
Royal Air Maroc (Casablanca) 
Royal Jordanian (Amman) 
Qatar Airways (Doha) 
Saudi Arabian Airlines (Riyadh, Jeddah, Madinah) 
Scandinavian Airlines System (Stockholm-Arlanda) 
Singapore Airlines (Dubai, Singapore)(non-stop on fridays) 
Swiss International Air Lines (Zürich) 
Syrian Arab Airlines (Aleppo, Damascus) 
Tajikistan Airlines (Dushanbe) 
TAROM (Bucharest-Otopeni) 
Tatarstan Airlines (Kazan) 
Tavrey Airlines (Odessa, Simferopol) 
Thomas Cook Airlines (Brussels) 
Turkish Airlines (Abu Dhabi, Adana, Addis Ababa, Adiyaman, Agri, Algiers, Almaty, 
Amman, Amsterdam, Ankara, Antalya, Ashgabat, Astana, Athens, Bahrain, Baku, 
Bangkok-Suvarnabhumi, Barcelona, Basel/Mulhouse, Batman, Batumi, Beijing, 
Beirut, Belgrade, Berlin-Tegel, Bishkek, Bodrum, Brussels, Bucharest-Otopeni, 
Budapest, Cairo, Casablanca, Chicago-O'Hare, Chisinău, Cologne/Bonn, Copenhagen, 
Dalaman, Damascus, Delhi, Denizli, Diyarbakir, Dnepropetrovsk, Doha, Donetsk, Dubai, 
Dublin, Dushanbe, Düsseldorf, Ekaterinburg, Elazig, Ercan, Erzincan, Erzurum, Eskisehir, 
Frankfurt, Gaziantep, Geneva, Hamburg, Hanover, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Izmir, Jeddah, 
Kahramanmaras, Karachi, Kars, Kayseri, Kazan, Khartoum, Kiev-Boryspil, Konya, 
Kuwait City, Lagos, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London-Heathrow, London-Stansted, Lyon, 
Madrid, Malatya, Manchester, Mardin, Milan-Malpensa, Minsk, Moscow-Sheremetyevo, 
Mumbai, Munich, Mus, Muscat, Nevsehir, New York-JFK, Nice, Nuremberg, Odessa, 
Osaka-Kansai, Oslo, Paris-Orly, Prague, Priština, Riga, Riyadh, Rome-Fiumicino, 
Rostov, Samsun, Sanaa, Sanliurfa, Sarajevo, Seoul-Incheon, Shanghai-Pudong, 
Simferopol, Singapore, Sivas, Skopje, Sofia, Stockholm-Arlanda, St. Petersburg, 
Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Tabriz, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Tehran-Mehrabad, Tel Aviv, 
Tirana, Tokyo-Narita, Trabzon, Tripoli, Tunis, Van, Venice, Vienna, Warsaw, Zagreb, Zürich) 
Turkmenistan Airlines (Ashgabat) 
UM Airlines (Ivano-Frankiv, Kiev-Boryspil, Kharkov, Chernovtsi) 
Ural Airlines (Ekaterinburg) 
Uzbekistan Airways (Tashkent) 

Charter Airlines

Aside from the ones above, the following airlines also operate out of Atatürk International Airport:
Atlasjet (Yerevan) 
Bestair (Brussels, London, Paris, Zurich) 
Blue Wings (Berlin-Tegel, Bremen, Cologne/Bonn, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, 
Hamburg, Hanover, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart) 
Inter Airlines (Antalya, Bodrum, Dalaman, Izmir, Kayseri, Konya) 
Kuzu Airlines Cargo (Amsterdam, Dubai, Kuwait, London-Gatwick) 
Saga Airlines (Manchester) 
Tarhan Tower Airlines (Adana, Amsterdam, Ankara, Antalya, Bari, Brussels, 
Erbil, Izmir, Kayseri, Milan-Malpensa, Naples, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, 
Stuttgart, Tehran-Mehrabad, Yerevan) 
World Focus Airlines