Atatürk International Airport (IST) is the major international airport in İstanbul, Turkey. Opened in 1924 and located in Yeşilköy, on the European side of the city, it is 24 km west of the city centre. In 1980, the airport was renamed to Atatürk International Airport in honor of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and the first president of the Republic of Turkey. With total passenger traffic of 32 million for the year 2010, it is among the top 40 airports in the world in terms of total passenger traffic and the 16th busiest in the world in terms of international passenger traffic. It was Europe's 8th busiest airport in 2010.
Atatürk airport has four terminals as following;
- Terminal 1, for domestic flights
- Terminal 2, for international flights
- Terminal 3, for cargo flights
- General Aviation Terminal
Inaugurated in 2000, the new international terminal is an efficient and modern terminal. After the new terminal opened, domestic flights were moved to the old international terminal. Despite its 1960s design, this new domestic terminal can handle more passengers than the more modern but smaller previous domestic terminal.
Atatürk Airport still faces capacity issues; it ranks somewhere between 30th and 40th in the world by both cargo and passenger traffic, handling over 947,000 tonnes of load (cargo, freight and mail) and over 32.1 million passengers in the year 2010. The total number of passengers has doubled in the past five years, and domestic traffic has almost quadrupled (see statistics section below). Its rated capacity of 14 million international passengers per year and 10 million domestic passengers per year was barely sufficient for the demand in 2007 and 2008. The Istanbul greater metropolitan area is expected/projected to have a demand of 35 million international passengers and 25 million domestic passengers annually by the year 2015. However, introduction of high speed trains between Ankara and Istanbul in 2012, and completion of the construction of the intercity highways linking Istanbul to other cities may help decrease this demand.
Atatürk shares traffic with Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, which is on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, which had annual passenger traffic of just 11.1 million in 2010. The two airports both provide domestic and international service to the Istanbul area.
IST ranked 19th in ACI statistics at the end of 2010 in terms of international traffic with over 20 Million international passengers. If the current passenger growth maintains itself, IST is expected to become one of the 30 busiest airports in the world in terms of total passenger traffic and top 15 in terms of international traffic by the end of year 2012.