Originally Posted by tcmb99

I spoke to a pilot at TK and he also said 747s can land in Istanbul even on the shorter runway when necessary and an A380 landed for an airshow back in the day. He also said TK has 2 747 cargos on lease now. so sorry for misinforming everyone here.

he also said that 747s usually park at open spaces and there are only a few gates that can handle them, most of which are actively used by TK 777s. his view is that Istanbul is an operational nightmare right now and having jumbo type passenger airplanes at Ataturk regularly would cause complete chaos. He thinks we will see a lot of 747s and A380s be it TK or some other airlines at the new airport.

I think the most important thing here is that Ataturk will close in a year or two even if there are delays, and TK probably needs to order any 747s or a380s right about now if they want to operate them at the new airport. I read news recently that they want to have 500 planes by 2023 and they have 320 now, so we can expect to see a lot of different orders in the next few years.