Sedat Guzel

Sedat Guzel

Sedat Guzel

nilsrtw

Yeah what could possibly go wrong..

hfly

1. Limak is a construction company. The only experience they have in operating and airport is Pristina airport in Kosovo. An airport which has a grand total of 4 arriving and 4 departing gates.
2. Limak did NOT build SAW, they built a new international terminal about a decade after SAW opened. They had a minority stake in SAW, which they acquired a decade after its opening, but the majority owner and "expertise" was and is Malaysia airport holdings.
3. Yes Turkish companies have done quite a lot of airport building abroad, I believe the leaders in this have been TAV and ENKA, but LIMAK is not and has never been a factor in this industry. Their experience thusfar, other than Pristina as mentioned above has included renovating and extending a single terminal building at Cairo airport, building a 1,000 passenger airport facility in Izmit a decade ago, Laying a single short runway in Usak in 1997, and lining a Runway in Izmir in 1992.

I and everyone here agrees that the airport will "open" on the 29th of October. The problem with your posts Sedat is that what you are writing has little or nothing to do with the subject. This is the TK forum on FT. People who post here are for the most part very regular fliers with TK, and many have great knowledge of not only TK, but of IST and SAW and airports in many places around the world as well. I would posit from your posts and the way they were written, far greater knowledge of these things than you. No one quibbled with the prowess of Turkish construction companies prior to your post, nor do they need to be educated as to how large the Turkish aviation market is. You are trying to turn a reasonable post into the reality of having a quality airport operating on a certain date into some sort of nationalistic one on Turkey and Limak, and quite frankly by doing so have managed to bring Limak into question as what you have written about them is just untrue or to be charitable a gross misrepresentation.

Now to the realities of the situation.

The airport is supposedly 76 or 78, or 80 percent done, depends on your news source. They have had the appropriate number of workers going since day 1, so whether its 12,000 or 31,000 that doesn't mean anything. I have no doubt that the construction will be finished before that time.

There is not a major airport that has been opened ANYWHERE in the last 20 years that has been able to open and commence full operations by its stated opening time. There are a LOT of variables, baggage systems, fire suppression systems, all sorts of international aviation testing, and about 1000 other things, almost all of which to date exist on paper and have not been done yet because the airport is not yet built. But I will go one farther for you. Let's say that they get the airport open AND "operating" at the end of October. What good is it if it takes passengers hours to get there and back, due to the lack of a Metro and all the road connections that might be finished the next year or the year after that? I mean its great to brag and say, look how fast we did it! But seriously, what good is it if let's say 20 million people are severely inconvenienced? What happens to the reputation of Turkish airlines if there are serious snafus with anyone of 100 systems?!?! Not a big deal for foreign carriers who maybe have a flight or two a day, but what about TK whose hub is IST, what reputational damage does it risk? What happens when you have a snowstorm, but because the roads are finished late, you have no hotels within 30km of the airport open? Can you imagine?

headingwest

Wow, so much negativity on this thread. Seems like a lot of people want this to fail!

hfly

"want this to fail"? No, not at all.

Done right, so that myself and millions of others do not have their lives negatively impacted due to an unrealistic schedule, and something that would actually be for TK, IST and Turkey's long term good? For sure.

Stewie Mac

I don't think it's negativity, more a healthy dose of realism. As hfly points out, no major airport anywhere has opened on time and without problem, and few on this thread expect the new airport to buck that trend... although I think that we all want this to succeed. I certainly do - old IST is really no fun.

craigthemif

Indeed. The most logical behaviour for many of us is to avoid booking TK flights for mid-October until 2019 at least.

I'm sure we can all speculate about better ways to manage the transition, but simply insisting that Ataturk will close and every airline must move..

headingwest

Well I hope that this project turns out to be a success and that it improves many aspects of people's lives. At least Turkey has the guts to get on and do something, not like my country (UK) where they have been taking literally a lifetime just to decide what to do. LHR is no fun and in the near future it will only get worse, but the Turks will have a new up-to-date airport.

hfly

Look, this is not the Marmary tunnel whereby you can open the tunnel on time in record time but not have an actual commuter rail system in place that goes most places for another 6 years. It is not the third bridge which opened "on time" a year and a half ago, yet none of the Northern Marmara highway is open, and will not be for at least 3 years, 4 years past its opening date, which means that it is all but useless until then for its stated purpose which was to alleviate transit truck traffic through Istanbul - not to mention that it is key to transport to and from the new airport!. You see I remember when the current IST was built (meaning the international terminal, as the domestic terminal is what the whole airport was less than 20 years ago), and although it was several levels of magnitude larger than what was there before, all of the basic infrastructure was in place. I remember two years into the terminal being open there being large bins everywhere throughout the airport to catch rain from the hundreds of leaks in the roof. I remember never being able to speak with people at the ticket counters because there were no holes in the 4 cm thick glass (and TAV even trying to get 2000 Euros a piece to put speaking holes in). I remember them having to re-tile the floors of the entire departure area, because they had used inferior consumer grade tiles. The luggage system almost breaking down monthly the first six months, or even the fact that there are weight and load issues down below to this day. Hell, I even remember the weird Cargo and logistics island in the middle of the taxiway that at times even had plastic outdoor chairs for the employees that only got paved over a couple of years ago. I can go on about problems and delays to the parking structure, the huge traffic jams for the under planned access roads, etc.

Now TAV knew about many of these things the day the terminal opened. Why then did they open so quickly? Well...........because of political promises and of course the fact that their BOT deal was very strict and they wanted to start bringing in revenue. So a parallel with Limak here? The thing is this: When they opened the new Terminal at the very end of the 90's IST was a second rate airport, it had 12 gates, and TK flew maybe 8 million passengers a year, the whole airport maybe got 10 million a year. As we know now, the World has changed, TK is hitting 70 million a year and has an international reputation to keep as does IST. I can guarantee you that if there is a leaking problem, it will be spoken about everywhere. If the only real road in and out to Istanbul is using the already "upgraded" and over used Gokturk road, that leads to a similarly backed up TEM, then you are going to get a lot of complaints, especially as the Metro will not be open and usable for at least two years past the date.

airoli

Something else just occured to me: Imagine that the airport really takes on full commercial operations from TK and other carriers before the end of November or so. Teething problems will inevitably be an issue. And then, tataa, winter arrives and it starts to snow.

So much fun awaits!

IAN-UK

For a long time Munich was the example cited of how to switch airports overnight. But I think even there, there were the odd ripples of, errrr, confusion.

Now I believe Munich at least had a pretty adequate surface access to the new (current) airport. And it had behind it the fabled German approach to efficient planning and execution.

I'm sure Turkish engineers, planners and logistics gurus can be every bit as professional as any others. But getting all those essential bits and bobs from IST-1 to IST-2 could be a bit of a challenge, one best faced in a phased approach. Widely separated phases.

Sedat Guzel

Sedat Guzel