Over 6 mln people travel during Eid holiday in Turkey

ANKARA / ISTANBUL

CİHAN photo

More than 6 million people traveled during the Eid holiday across Turkey, with around 5 million of them traveling by bus, 700,000 by air and 300,000 by rail, according to data compiled by Anadolu Agency. 

Mehmet Erdoğan, the head of the Bus Companies’ Federation (TOFED), said around 5 million people traveled on July 15-21 across Turkey, adding around 400 million Turkish Liras worth of bus tickets were sold, as quoted by Anadolu Agency. 

According to data from Turkish Airlines, a total of 220,965 passengers traveled on domestic flights. The number of people who took off or landed in Turkey’s airports exceeded 500,000, according to Turkish Airlines. 

The most popular domestic destinations for airplanes which took off or landed at Istanbul’s Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen airports were the Aegean province of İzmir, the Mediterranean coast of Antalya and the capital city of Ankara. They were followed by Bodrum and Dalaman on the west coast, Adana in the south and Trabzon in the Black Sea region. 

The most popular foreign destinations were London, Tel Aviv, Paris, North Cyprus, Frankfurt, Moscow, Munich and New York. 

Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport saw an all-time traffic high on July 21, with 1,389 airplanes taking off from or landing at the airport, as reported by Doğan News Agency. Antalya Airport also hit an all-time high in passenger traffic on July 18, with 169,000 passengers taking off or landing in 1,012 airplanes throughout the day.

A total of 67,453 people traveled by high speed trains during the Eid holiday, according to Anadolu Agency data. Over 238,000 people traveled by the state-run train operating agency TCDD’s regional and main-route trains.