Airports in Turkey

Pegasus Airlines is set to recommence its scheduled flights between Sofia and Istanbul, marking a significant milestone in air travel connectivity between Bulgaria and Turkey. The anticipated relaunch is scheduled for May 1, as reported by the news outlet TravelNews.

Turkish airports served 14.7 million passengers in the first month of 2024, pointing to an 8.1 percent increase compared to January 2023, according to data from the General Directorate of State Airports Authority (DHMİ).

International passengers rose by 12 percent to 7.7 million, while the domestic passenger tally was up 4.2 percent to around 7.1 million people.

Turkish Airlines (THY) carried 55.97 million passengers in the January-August period, marking a 20 percent increase from a year earlier.

The international passenger tally rose by 19 percent to 35.3 million, while domestic passengers were up nearly 22 percent to 20.7 million.

The passenger load factor improved from 78.9 percent in January-August last year to 82.9 percent.

The total passenger traffic at Türkiye's airports has increased by 23 percent in the first seven months of the year from a year ago to 184.5 million.

The forest fire in the southern province of Mersin's Anamur district has been extinguished in six hours with the intervention of a large number of aerial and ground teams, while a total of 51 decares in area was damaged in the fire.

Breaking out in a wooded area in Anamur at around 1:30 a.m. on July 10, the fire spread over a wide area in a short time.

Total of 94.5 million passengers have gone through Türkiye's airports in the first six months of 2023, data from the General Directorate of State Airports Authority (DHMİ) have shown.

The number of foreign tourists visiting Istanbul increased by 19 percent from a year ago in the first five months of 2023 to around 6.3 million.

In May alone, 1.5 million foreign tourists arrived in the city, according to the data from the provincial directorate of culture and tourism. This marked a 7 percent increase in tourist arrivals compared with the same month of last year.

British Airways has launched flights between Sabiha Gökçen Airport on Istanbul's Asian side and London's Heathrow.

The inaugural flight touched down on Sabiha Gökçen on June 1.

The new route between Sabiha Gökçen and Heathrow will operate four times per week on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays on a mix of A320 and A321 aircraft, the Turkish airport said in a statement.

Flights at the Gaziantep Airport were stopped for about 12 hours, while 26 flights were canceled after an unidentified object was reported in the airspace.

An unidentified object was detected by the cockpit crew of two passenger planes at an altitude of approximately 9,000 feet (2,743 meters) in the southern province of Gaziantep at around midnight on May 20.

Türkiye's airports served nearly 39 million passengers in the January-March period, up by 31.7 percent in the same period of 2022, data from the General Directorate of State Airports Authority (DHMİ) have shown.