starflyergold

Well judging purely by some of the pictures it looks unlikely that a full operation will commence in October, less than four months away now. I remember the extensive testing at DUB and that was just for a new terminal and not an entirely new airport. One way or the other something will have to give. We'll see how the authorities and TK will play this.

mafaky

A similar orientation period also took place before the opening of Terminal 4 in Changi, Singapore. It took around 10-12 months after the construction fully finished and everything was installed.

When I reminded people about this fact, in a Turkish Forum, one fellow contributor came up with a very "wise" and "irrevocable" reason why: "Maybe at Changi they waited until all the sales shops and DF in the terminal fill up the place!"

nocturne14

You are absolutely right. If i recall correctly, T4 which is the smallest terminal in Changi, completed building in Dec'16. They opened the terminal in Oct'17. For a small terminal, they took 10 months to do testing and trials.
You can't simply just test the different systems in the airport in isolation and assume they will work together when it opens. Everything is connected to one another.

More importantly as hfly indicated before, none of the support services are ready. They cant handle even 10% of TK flights.

There were rumours that Atlasglobal will move over first and be the guinea pig. That could likely happen.

hfly

I was speaking with someone yesterday who pointed out how absolutely ridiculous it is and was for TK to say that they plan on having cargo operations laws behind by six months to a year. Over 90 percent of their cargo operations are Trans shipments, meaning cargo that does not come from nor which is destined for Istanbul nor in most cases Turkey furthermore over 80 percent of TK cargo is not carried end to end in TK cargo aircraft end to end meaning that most cargo is transferred not just from plane to plane but often from cargo to passenger plane and vice versa, tk sells these services as serving something like 350 destinations. The point being that having your cargo operations split along two airports will severely curtail their entire cargo operation as having to move containers between airports will essentially kill their operations and those cargo operations are not only a cash cow, but make many of their passenger flights viable. Many products that use TK cargo cannot tolerate a 24 hour delay and there are plenty of competitors lined up to take this business away from TK. Based solely on this, even if everything was ready besides cargo, and it will not be, it would be foolish to move before cargo can move as well.

mafaky

1) TK (more tan a month ago...) has started constructing a smallish MRO Hangar that will be used for line maintenance. This one can hold possibly 3 narrow bodies, or a widebody with another narrowbody. It is constructed at the southwest part on Pier 4 of the Main Terminal. On previous plans that area was shown as remote parking (one of the several remote parkin areas). At the rear (eastern) side of this hangar also a cargo transfer (TK's or for general use; I don't know...) facility is under construction. Not any huge sized facility, possibly to cater for transhipping belly cargo and or baggage from the planes .
2) It's made public that TK is after getting a 1 Billion USD loan from a consortium of banks (inc. a major Chinese one) to cover the costs for moving to the New Airport as well as for misc. outdoor or indoor facilities. So must be including the costs for the CIP Lounges, Offices, Ops Center, other facilities but I highly doubt this figure may ever cover the new HQ Building they will have to erect as well as the gigantic MRO Facility (for base maintenance) that will house more than 30 planes or so. This last one will be built to the north of the current Terminal, just at its opposite side. Previously a Satellite Terminal was planned to be built there...

3) A recent rumor (less than a week's old...) whispers that TK is planning to lease out some of its fleet due to "flight crew shortages". Amongst them, there are 4 a332F's (one third of TK's current widebody all-cargo fleet).

Sedat Guzel

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mafaky

This is the Calibration & Testing airplane from SHGM. What's the date of its landing? Today, or a more outdated one?

mafaky

You have now starting sounding with some "pessimism"!... @:-)

Actually, no one (except for some make-believers and wishful thinkers) really expected that everything can be commissioned in one step; my words going particularly for the Terminal. This is the largest ever terminal on earth, under a single roof (naturally counting the piers as parts of the terminal) and how can one naively accept that everything can be commissioned overnight?

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Ray Ube

I like the "crescent" effect on the floor and roof ceiling

Ray Ube

NEW ISTANBUL AIRPORT TO HIT MIDDLE EAST HUBS

The opening of Istanbul’s third airport will result in a drop of passenger numbers for Middle East hub airports in Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, according to Kokpit.aero citing the German website aero.de.

The new airport, scheduled to open on Oct. 29, 2018, will be the largest in Europe, consisting of seven (6 actually) runways and, when fully completed, will have a capacity to handle 200 million passengers per year.

Transit flights through Istanbul’s existing two airports have already increased even before the new airport has opened with the numbers up 21 percent in 2017. At the same time Dubai and Doha airports saw no rise in transit numbers while Abu Dhabi was down 14 percent.

Kokpit.aero said there are plans to transfer all flights out of the current Istanbul Ataturk Airport within 48 hours of the new airport opening.

https://ahvalnews.com/istanbul/new-i...ddle-east-hubs
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The new airport is designed to cater for the ever-growing transit passengers...just look at the span of the TRANSFER AREA (#4 in scale model below)...approximately 210 metres wide!