The Silviri District, a suburban area in western Istanbul is to become home to the city’s third airport, after the airport was green lighted by mayor Kadir Topbas. The airport, which is being built because of massive growth in passenger numbers to the city’s existing airports, is to be the biggest of them all. According to the mayor the new airport will be several times larger than Istanbul Ataturk.
The mayor also revealed plans for further expansions in the city’s airport capacity, via expansions at the existing airports, he said:
"These plans have been made in cooperation with the Transportation Ministry. They want to increase the capacity of the current airports in a short period of time. There is an additional runway at Sabiha Gökçen. We are considering building another runway at Ataturk Airport. But we have added a third airport to our plans."
Istanbul Ataturk, the city’s main airport received some 30 million passengers in 2009. It also saw passenger numbers increase 13% year on year in the first four months of 2010.
Meanwhile, smaller airport Sabiha Gökçen, home to the majority of Istanbul’s budget capacity is also seeing passenger numbers grow rapidly; it is expected to receive in excess of 11 million passengers this year.
The new airport has the potential not only to boost the Istanbul property market, but the Turkey property market as a whole. For many tourists around the world, connecting flights are a necessary evil, and for others a significant saving, the new airport will therefor increase accessibility of property markets across Turkey.
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