Turkish Airlines’ Istanbul hub is humming

Six months after an overnight shift from Istanbul’s old airport to its new one in a carefully choreographed ‘Great Move’, airlines and passengers flying through it appear to be getting used to the sheer size of the international hub, an airport bigger than the area of Kathmandu.

With three of its six runways and four of the five concourses compete, the   airport at the edge of the Black Sea is well on its way to become the world’s busiest. Taking advantage of the airport’s location Turkey’s flag carrier will have a 500 aircraft fleet serving 400 cities around the world by 2025.

Most passengers flying Turkish Airlines to and from Kathmandu transit this 76 million sq m terminal with five piers and 145 boarding gates. Disembarking in gate F17 and connecting to a flight out of A14, for example, means taking into account the walking time between the two ramps and also security check.

But once upstairs in the transit lounge, there is plenty of help – including from a friendly multilingual robot with a perpetual smile that can help passengers find gates and facilities in the main terminal family-friendly lounges and snooze rooms make it easy to pass the time.

“The new airport was a must to accommodate Turkish Airlines’ growth plans, and we hope to give passengers to and from Nepal much more comfort and flexibility with better connectivity during Visit Nepal 2020,” says Turkish’s Nepal manager Abdullah Tuncer Kececi.

Istanbul airport’s architects have ensured it is different from other modern airports by giving it a Turkish ambience. The duty free area is laid out to resemble the Misir Carsisi spice market in the city with stalls selling baklava, cheeses, dried fruits, and other delights. Turkey being a gastronomic superpower, the transit lounge has a enormous range of Ottoman style eateries from cafes to dumpling kiosks. Nepalis will notice how much of our culinary and linguistic heritage is intertwined with Turkey, with familiar words like kebap, pilaff, köfte, halva.

Even though transit passengers can get city tours or even layovers if the time between flights is more than 9 hours for business and 12 hours for economy, there is a case to be made for just staying at the airport since the city is a good 45 minute ride away. Passengers with a round trip ticket and connection periods of over 20 hours can get Stopover privilege of a free one night stay in a 4-star hotel (economy class passengers) or two nights in a 5-star hotel (business class passengers) in the city.

Turkish Airlines has upgraded its business lounge and the emphasis, again, is on food. There is Turkish coffee and an elaborate tea room built in traditional style. You can watch chefs prepare your orders, and the lounge is a case study on how a country should project its attractions to turn transit passengers into future tourists. In fact, like the airport, the Miles&Smiles business lounge is destination in itself – almost making you wish the layover was longer.

Some people eat to fly, and others fly to eat. Turkish Airlines does not confine its culinary attractions to its lounge, but also takes it up in the air. The food is prepared in an enormous gourmet kitchen in Istanbul managed by Turkish Do&Co with internationally-trained chefs, some 500 of whom  actually fly as part of the crew and prepare dishes onboard. The flight kitchen has 2,500 staff preparing 200,000 meals a day. The menus change on a weekly basis and differ according to in bound or outbound flights.

It has been called ‘The New Silk Road’ and Turkish Airlines is exploiting Istanbul’s strategic location between Africa, Europe and Asia to connect non-stop flights to anywhere in the world. There are 60 capital cities within a 3.5 hour flying distance of Istanbul, most of which are among Turkish’s current 306 destinations in 125 countries. Passengers from these cities can connect to anywhere in the world through Istanbul on long-haul flights.

Turkish’ Vice-President Sales for Asia and the Far East Tuncay Eminoglu told Nepali Times in an interview: “Istanbul is really at the aviation crossroads of the world, and with our fleet of medium and long-range aircraft we can connect any point in the world to any other point through this hub, especially in Asia where the growth in passenger traffic is highest.”