SABIHA GÖKÇEN AIRPORT IS READY FOR THE HOLIDAY RUSH
Sabiha Gökçen Airport is ready for the tourism season. “With the opening of the holiday season, we have made all our preparations to offer our guests an easy and comfortable travel experience at our airport,” said Kerem Maybek, Acting CEO of ISG.
With the start of the holiday season, Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport has completed its preparations to further increase its service quality. Having completed 2023 with a record 37.1 million passengers, Sabiha Gökçen welcomed 16.2 million passengers in the first five months of the year.
Ranking 2nd in the category of ‘mega airports’ hosting 25 million to 40 million passengers annually, Sabiha Gökçen Airport, with a 13.2% increase in passenger density, continues to contribute to Turkey’s tourism and offer tourists a more comfortable travel experience with its increased passenger capacity with the second runway.
Sabiha Gökçen Airport, dubbed as the ‘Airport of the City’ for its diversity of in-city transportation and proximity to hubs, provides comfortable access to a total of 164 destinations in 52 countries, including 40 domestic and 124 international connections.
“We completed our improvement works before the expected school and holiday break”
Kerem Maybek, Acting CEO of ISG, said, “The 2024 tourism season has started early and we have completed our improvement works in the terminal in parallel with this mobility before the expected school and holiday season. We have positioned additional gates and X-Ray devices to ease the passenger circulation in the terminal. We have assigned additional personnel in the operation, security and cleaning teams to increase the travel comfort of our passengers. We have also increased hygiene measures due to the expected intensity. Especially to facilitate the passage of international passengers through the passport control points, X-Ray devices have been moved 5 meters forward and the area in the security zone has been relieved. While the number of e-passport counters has been increased, we also have future projects to expand the passport control area on the Departures and Arrivals floors. In addition, within the scope of improving aviation security, we have redesigned and reshaped the BHS (Under Chute) Systems of our terminal to provide faster baggage handling time and more effective baggage operation.”
Speaking about the works carried out to meet the parking demands of passengers, Maybek said, “We have opened the parking lot with a capacity of 474 vehicles in front of the old terminal to the service of our guests in a way to meet the holiday density. In order to meet the increasing demand, work on the open parking area project, which we call the “Triangle Open Parking Lot Project” in the long term, has also started on the east side of the Arrivals Level.”
Fast and easy travel with digital solutions
Emphasizing that they make pre-travel transactions faster and easier with digital solutions, Kerem Maybek said, “Our guests can instantly track all flight information on the Sabiha Gökçen Mobile Application. They can also check-in with the self-service kiosks in our terminal and complete their transactions at the e-passport counters without waiting in line by using the Fast Passport Transition System with their chip passports.”
9 new international routes opened in 5 months
Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, the 9th busiest airport in Europe, has opened 9 new international routes since the beginning of the year. Pegasus Airlines’ connections to Zagreb (ZAG) in Croatia, Sphinx (SPX) in Egypt, Aktau (SCO) in Kazakhstan, Sofia (SOF) in Bulgaria, Chisinau (RMO) in Moldova and Bratislava (BTS) in Slovakia, Ajet’s flights to Sphinx (SPX) in Egypt, Egypt-based airline Air Cairo and Air Arabia Egypt Airline’s flights to Cairo (CAI) started. In addition, Pegasus’ Edinburgh, Scotland (EDI) and Mashhad, Iran (MHD) are among the new routes this year.
