Türkiye's second-biggest airport on Tuesday said it had served the highest number of passengers ever in 2023, in an announcement that comes more than a month after the opening of its second runway that will double its capacity.
The passenger count at Sabiha Gökçen Airport, located on Istanbul's Asian side, reached 37.1 million, it said in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The figure surpassed the previous all-time high of 35.5 million, registered in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic brought travel to a halt.
The outbreak halved the count to 17 million in 2020, before it rebounded to 25 million in 2021 and 30.8 million in 2022.
"We’ve hit a historic milestone with 37.1 million passengers in 2023 at Sabiha Gökçen," the statement read.
Inaugurating the second runway of the airport in late December, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said they expected the figure to surpass 37 million.
The expansion seeks to boost the capacity at the facility which has been facing challenges in coping with the growing air and passenger traffic.
Among the fastest-growing airports in Europe, Sabiha Gökçen serves a total of 162 destinations, including 122 international and 40 domestic routes, with a capacity of 41 million passengers.
Part of an infrastructural upgrade worth $970 million, the second runway is envisaged to help the airport lift its capacity to more than 85 million passengers annually.
Türkiye has injected hundreds of billions of dollars to expand and upgrade its infrastructure over the last two decades, which saw the number of its airports reach 57, from 26 in 2002.
Its vast Istanbul Airport, Türkiye’s largest and one of the biggest civil aviation hubs in the world, was officially opened in late October 2018 before becoming fully operational in April 2019.
The gleaming glass-and-steel structure along the Black Sea coast has managed to turn into one of the most important transit centers in aviation ever since.
The hub can handle 90 million passengers a year in the current phase. The figure is nothing compared to its potential capacity to serve 200 million after completing all phases.
All four phases of the airport’s construction and expansion, including six runways, are expected to be completed by 2028.
