Turkey: Istanbul Airport opens third parallel runway

Turkey’s Istanbul Airport has opened its third parallel runway for flight operations on 14 June. Anadolu Agency reported that the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presided over the runway’s opening ceremony. With this runway, Istanbul Airport is the first airport in Turkey and the second in Europe, after Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, to operate three runways in parallel. In April, Istanbul Airport filed an official application with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to ensure that its third runway would be open for flight operations by 18 June. This runway is expected to reduce the domestic taxi times by around 50%. According to a simulation, the average landing time will drop from 15 minutes to 11 minutes while average takeoff time will decrease from 22 minutes to 15 minutes.<br/>