In April 2025, Istanbul Airport became Europe’s first airport to implement triple independent parallel runway operations. The upgrade increased declared capacity from 120 to 148 movements per hour. Three months later, on July 2, the airport recorded 81 departures in a single hour, a European record.
That infrastructure milestone, combined with sustained performance across the full year, has earned Istanbul Airport Cirium’s 2025 Platinum Award for the world’s best-performing airport.
Istanbul handles over 84 million passengers annually across 330 destinations through 116 airlines. Positioned at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, the airport manages dense connectivity patterns, complex wave structures, and high daily aircraft movements. At this intensity, minor disruptions propagate quickly across regions and time zones without active management. (....)