Istanbul Airport Opens Fourth Main Runway After €890 Million Build

Istanbul Airport (IST) has put its fourth main runway into service, adding the first east-west strip to a layout that until now consisted entirely of north-south runways. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated the €890 million (about $1.05 billion) project on Friday 18 September.

Runway specifications

The new concrete runway is 2,820 metres long and 45 metres wide. With it, the airport now has six runways in total: four main runways and two reserve runways. The long-term master plan envisages nine runways, made up of six main and three reserve.

Because every earlier runway runs north-south, the east-west orientation changes how aircraft can be sequenced. Turkish officials said the runway will cut taxi and airborne times, which in turn saves fuel, time and emissions. Erdoğan also pointed to flexibility and safety in adverse weather as a benefit of the additional orientation.

Departures first

Initially the runway will be used for take-offs only. The airport said it is particularly suited to departures serving Anatolia, Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, flows that previously had to loop after leaving on north-south tracks. Future plans include running four runways simultaneously.

That ambition builds on an earlier operational step. Istanbul achieved simultaneous triple-parallel operations in April 2025, which was described as a first in Europe.

Traffic behind the investment

Istanbul Airport handled 84.5 million passengers in 2025, making it the second-busiest airport in Europe and the eighth-busiest worldwide. Daily records have continued in 2026: on 16 August the airport reported 291,000 passengers in a day, a figure described as a record for both Türkiye and Europe, and on 30 August it handled an all-time high of 1,787 flights in 24 hours. July’s total of 8.15 million passengers was reported as the highest in Europe for that month.

Across Türkiye, air passenger traffic reached 167.5 million in the first eight months of 2026, according to figures quoted at the ceremony.

Economic claims

Officials said airport-related activity employs more than 300,000 people and contributes 2.2% of GDP, about $24.2 billion. By 2030 they project 472,000 jobs and $44 billion in revenue. Those are government projections rather than independently audited figures. Türkiye has invested 2.12 trillion lira ($43.5 billion) in Istanbul transport and infrastructure, with $12.4 billion of that in aviation, the president said.

Why it matters for airlines

For Turkish Airlines and the many carriers feeding its hub, runway capacity is the main constraint on adding banks of connecting flights. A fourth main runway, with departures flowing in a different direction, should ease pressure on the existing parallel system during peaks and give controllers more options when wind conditions change.

The airport has not published a revised hourly movement capacity for the four-runway configuration, and full simultaneous four-runway operation is still described as a future goal. Airlines and lessors watching Istanbul as Europe’s fastest-growing hub will be looking for those numbers ahead of the 2027 summer season.