(electronic whooshing)
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to the new Istanbul airport.
In just two days, this new airport is going to be
fully operational for all flights in and out of Istanbul.
And in fact, this is the world's
largest single roof airport building,
and took just 42 months to complete.
What a marvel of engineering.
So, I want to now give you guys
a little tour of the airport.
Let's go.
(energetic music)
I mean, how often do you see an airport totally empty?
How often do you see all the check-in desks totally clean,
empty, tidy like this?
The new airport's waiting for its passengers.
So, here I found Stephan here.
Stephan, I want to ask you, what's the capacity plan
for this big airport terminal here?
- So, we will open with 90 million passengers
and we are going up to 200 million passengers per year.
- 200 million passengers a year
in Istanbul. - Yes, right.
- Massive, massive.
- It's the biggest greenfield airport in the world.
- Biggest greenfield airport.
And how many runways are they planning to have here?
- So, we start with two and it will go up to six runways.
- From two to six runways, yeah.
I think the travel in and out of Istanbul,
is going to see a huge improvement in two days' time.
This is really nice, you can sit down and check in.
I think this is a little bit above business class.
Maybe this is even closer to first class.
- Hi - Hi.
- From here, you can experience our check-in area,
and then you can go directly to the fast track
and then go on to experience the business lounge.
- [Sam] You're saying it's here?
Go straight to fast track passport control.
- Yeah. - And then go straight
to the lounge. - Yes.
- [Sam] This is what seamless travel should be.
- Yes. - What I like about this is that
it shows you the time walking to each gate.
The farthest I've seen is 18 minutes,
18 minutes walk, and then if you're lucky,
your gate is closer, five minutes or seven minutes walk.
I've hitched a ride and I'm just going to have an airport tour.
It's impossible to walk from one end to the other end.
There's 1.4 million square metres here.
Even on the golf cart it took over three minutes
to get from one end to the other end.
Serious airport exercise if you want to walk.
(whooshing)
(bell rings) (popping)