Should I delay my trip over Turkish airport switch?

Have a question? Ask our expert Simon Calder

Istanbul’s Blue Mosque: the city awaits the opening of its new travel hub (iStock)

Q I want to go to Istanbul over the first weekend of April, but I see this is when the majority of flights from the city’s Ataturk airport to the new airport are due to be switched. This looks like a major logistical undertaking with numerous potential issues, and I wonder whether you thought it prudent to avoid that weekend?

Also, if I end up going, and land at the new airport: it is further away from the city centre than the existing airport? Also I don’t believe the metro line extension to it is due to open until at least next year. What do you think?

Tony W

A April is a terrific time to be in Istanbul: before the heat and crowds of the summer, and with flowers blooming across the city. You may also be among the first passengers to experience IGA – the acronym for the new Istanbul airport.

This bold, fascinating and expensive venture is intended to provide Turkey’s largest city with a 21st-century gateway. It will also create a vast hub that will enable Turkish Airlines to claw back some of the market share that has been lost to the Gulf-based airlines, such as Emirates in Dubai and Qatar Airways in Doha.

Istanbul airport is geographically better placed to connect Europe with Africa (where Turkish Airlines serves more destinations than any other carrier) and Asia. It also has the huge benefit of having a giant “home market” – up to 15 million people live in Istanbul.

But the new airport has missed a succession of planned moves, and indeed has proved the bane of my life for the past five months. I went to the old (and pretty efficient) Ataturk airport in October to make a film about how it was imminently to close down. Airlines put special schedules into place (eg thinning out the number of flights) for the move that didn’t happen at the end of October and again at the start of 2019.

Some Turkish Airlines flights have moved but the vast majority remain at Ataturk. So now when I am told the new airport will be fully open next week or month, I regard it with suspicion.

From a practical point of view, though, the caution evident from the series of postponements suggests a conservative approach to switching operations. While this is potentially tricky for some Turkish Airlines passengers who are changing planes and need to get from one airport to the other, it should not have an impact on someone like you just flying to and from Istanbul.

The absence of a direct rail connection is a nuisance, but you can expect a massive fleet of buses to be deployed to ferry passengers between IGA and the city centre.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder