ANKARA 

Sabiha Gokcen Airport, Istanbul's Asian side air hub, served 44.2 million passengers between January and November, breaking the previous year's record of 41.4 million.

Turkish Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said on Thursday that the new runway, opened in Dec. 2023 to accommodate wide-body aircraft landings, contributed to the record. The statement was released on the second anniversary of this runway’s becoming operational.

Uraloglu stated that the taxiway, high-capacity aircraft and cargo aprons, the traffic control tower, and the state-of-the-art superstructure put into service, alongside the new runway, significantly boosted the Sabiha Gokcen Airport’s air traffic capacity.

In 2023, some 33.7 million passengers were served on both domestic and international flights in January–November.

“The passenger count surged 31% in the 11 months of 2025 versus the period before the second runway came into service in 2023,” he said.

“In just 11 months, we surpassed the record passenger count of 41.4 million in the whole of 2024,” he noted.

Uraloglu stated that some 208,643 aircraft took off and landed in January–November 2023, and this figure surged 20% to 250,538 in the same period this year. “In 2024 as a whole, this figure was 242,612,” he added.