The Airport

Istanbul Airport is an international airport in the Arnavutköy European district of the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The airport has been designed as the largest airport in the world, with a capacity of up to 150 million passengers per year, expandable in the future to 200 million. It is the third international airport to be built in Istanbul after Atatürk International Airport and Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, and is set to become the main international airport serving Istanbul. Atatürk Airport will be closed for scheduled passenger flights once the new airport is fully operational, and its IATA Code IST will be transferred to the new airport.

The airport was inaugurated on 29 October 2018, although it has been receiving aircraft since April 2018.

Workers' working conditions

In September 2018, construction workers demonstrated to denounce their working conditions: several dozen fatal incidents, delays in the payment of their wages and housing in poor condition. Hundreds of workers are arrested by the police; among them, 24 trade unionists are imprisoned and 19 others put under judicial control.2
For Nihat Demir, general secretary of the Dev-Yapi-Is construction workers' union, the pressure to complete the project and the long working hours made the airport a "graveyard". According to a report published in February by Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, nearly 400 workers have lost their lives at the site since construction began in 2015, while the government acknowledges only 27. Workers reported that the deaths were hidden and that their families received a sum of money.2

Environmental impact

Unfortunately a change has been made to the Green area but the government wanted to take away from the centre of Istanbul so that it does not increase the famous traffic it has because of the amount of people living there (15 million).
The airport is also situated on a vital migration route for birds, which causes them to slow down a little bit their route to another side.

Location

The new airport is located 35 kilometres northeast of the city. It occupies an area of 7,659 hectares that was partly occupied by defunct coal mines that were decommissioned and covered for the construction of the airport.

Transportation

Taxi between Istanbul's new airport and Sabiha Gokcen

The travel time between airports by the istanbul airport taxi will be about one and a half hour and the cost will be about 500 liras per car.