On Sunday, Istanbul Airport serviced 1,684 flights, breaking Frankfurt Airport’s record of 1,624 set on September 11th, 2019, according to the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) said Monday.
Already Europe’s busiest hub, the watchdog said it saw a 12% surge in daily traffic following the end of the 2023 Champions League Final in Istanbul, as fans returned home.
Eurocontrol also recorded daily flows increasing in the home cities of the Champions League finalists. At Milan Malpensa Airport, which is the biggest international airport in norther Italy, traffic surged 54% week-over-week. Manchester Airport saw its traffic increase by a comparatively modest 5%.
According to Eurocontrol, the previous three records in daily arrival-departures at a European airport were all generated in close succession in 2019 before the pandemic.
It added, “The former record was held by Frankfurt, overtaking, in less than a month, Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport (1,612 daily flights on 26 August 2019), which in turn replaced Madrid Barajas (1,600 daily flights on 2 June 2019).”
Turkish transportation and infrastructure minister Adil Karaismailoglu reported last month that a new record was set for the number of daily flights and passenger flow at Istanbul Airport. On April 30th, 195,640 passengers were handled aboard 1,301 flights.
Istanbul’s new airport opened four and a half years ago, and of the two international hubs which service the city, it is the bigger airport. Replacing the older Ataturk Airport, it has developed into a bustling modern airport connecting Asia and Europe. Both Star Alliance and Turkish Airlines utilize the hub as a base of operations, and the airport announced it had served more than 200 million passengers on the 6th of May.
Istanbul’s new airport has even been able to catch some additional demand due to current geopolitical tensions. Flights to Moscow, London, Dubai, and Tel Aviv are all among the most popular routes, having been traveled by roughly six million passengers since the airport opened in 2018.
