Istanbul,Turkey, Oct. 31: Come November 9, Istanbul, the Turkish capital that straddles Asia and Europe, will have two fully-operational international airports with the formal inauguration of the Istanbul Sabina Gokcen International Airport (ISGIA) by the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The ISGIA is located on the Asian side of Istanbul. The European part of the city has the Ataturk airport.
The airport has been modernised by the GMR Infrastructure Limited along with Limak Insaat San. Ve Tic. A.S. and Malaysia Airports Holdings Limited with an estimated cost of Rs 3143.50 crores.
Though the consortium was given 24 months to complete the project following the ground breaking ceremony on May 3, 2008, the airport was modernised in just 18 months.
Mr Tayyip praised the GMR group and other partners for completing the project much ahead of the schedule.
The Union minister for civil aviation, Mr Praful Patel, who participated in the inauguration ceremony, too praised the GMR group and other alliance partners for modernising the Turkish airport.
The GMR group is already operating India’s first green field airport in Hyderabad and is constructing the world’s second largest airport in New Delhi.
The Turkish airport is the third airport being handled by the group.
This new international terminal is designed to handle 20 million passengers every year.
Commenting on the milestone, Mr G.M. Rao, the chairman of the GMR group said: “The Istanbul SGIA project is significant to our foray into the international airport market.”
Mr Rao defended the collection of ‘user development fee’ at airports saying that facilities on par with international standards could not be provided to the air travellers unless the infrastructure companies were allowed to collect the fee.
The fee, he said, was the main source of income for the developers.
He assured that the New Delhi airport would be ready by the end of March 2010.
ISGIA is slated to become the third-busiest airport in Turkey (after Ataturk and Antalya airports) by end of 2009.
Air traffic is also set to go up exponentially once Turkey is allowed to join the European Union.