Istanbul Airport gets digital transformation award

ISTANBUL

Istanbul’s new mega airport has been chosen the best in “digital transformation” category among its peers in Europe.

The winners of the 16th Annual Airport Council International (ACI) Europe Best Airport Awards were announced on Nov. 17.

“The Digital Transformation Award went to Istanbul Airport,” ACI said in a statement.

The judges considered that the airport adopted a clear digitalization strategy with a wide range of technological solutions in place to create a seamless travel experience and modernize airside operations in line with the vision of a digital airport, it added.

“Amongst the digital solutions highlighted by the judges were the data center approach for all its IT services and the blockchain platform enabling information flow between the airport and its stakeholders,” said the statement.

Istanbul Airport, which has been operating with three runways since June, is one of the most important and largest airports in the world with around 90 million annual passenger capacity. The airport is expected to serve 200 million passengers annually with full capacity after the completion of all four phases with six runways by 2028.

Istanbul’s second airport, Sabiha Gökçen, was highly commended in the “25-40 million passengers” category, but the award went to Lisbon Airport. Both airports were praised for efforts to improve the safety and health measures against the coronavirus pandemic and digitals solutions offered to passengers.

Torino, Malta, Hamburg and Roma airports got the other awards in traffic volume categories, while Budapest Airport was given the Eco-Innovation Award.

Meanwhile, Turkish-German airline SunExpress is giving passengers the option to book a vacant middle seat for a small fee, the company has said.

The offer applies to all connections in the SunExpress network, starting from 59.99 Turkish Liras ($8) on domestic routes and 39.99 euros ($47) on international routes, the airline said in a statement.

Based in sunny Antalya on the Turkish Mediterranean, SunExpress was founded in 1989 as a joint venture of Turkish Airlines and Germany’s Lufthansa.