Airport tender in September

ISTANBUL - Doğan News Agency

Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım announces third airport tender.

The government will open a tender in September for a third airport in Istanbul, Transport Minister Binali Yıldırdım said yesterday.

Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for a major subway project on Istanbul’s Anatolian side, Yıldırım said Atatürk International Airport, currently the largest in Turkey, was failing to meet the rising demand.
The annual capacity of Sabiha Gökçen, the other airport in the city, has also reached 12 million passengers, Yıldırım noted. “It is also hardly meeting the demand. So we thought that Istanbul, a world brand, a pearl, deserves a large airport. The prime minister has instructed this. The tender for the third airport will be held in September,” he said.

The capacity of the to-be-built airport will be 150 million passengers and it will be one of the best in the world, the minister also said.

The planned airport will have five tracks and 1 million square meters of terminal area.

The Üsküdar-Ümraniye-Çekmeköy-Sancaktepe subway is a 17 kilometer line. A total of nearly 4.1 kilometers of tunnels will be drilled within for the project. Doğuş İnşaaat has undertaken the 564 million euro project. It starts from the historic neighborhood of Üsküdar and reaches the growing neighborhoods and suburban areas of the Anatolian side.