The second runway of Sabiha Gökçen Airport was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar, and Defense Industry President Haluk Görgün. With the opening of the new runway, Sabiha Gökçen Airport aims to serve 85 million passengers annually.
In 2021, the airport welcomed 25 million passengers, and in 2022, it hosted approximately 31 million passengers. The airport previously had a single runway of 3,000 meters in length, which couldn't accommodate wide-body aircraft. The newly opened second runway is 60 meters wide and 3,540 meters long, allowing even the widest-bodied aircraft to use Sabiha Gökçen.
The addition of the second runway brings three parallel taxiways, a central apron with a capacity of 62 aircraft covering 650,000 square meters, and a cargo apron with a capacity for 40 aircraft covering 300,000 square meters.
Furthermore, the entire infrastructure of the airport, including the air traffic control tower, technical block, customs, fire station, and garage building, has been renewed.
The new runway at Sabiha Gökçen Airport will be used for landings, while the existing runway will be designated for takeoffs, effectively doubling the airport's capacity.
Speaking at the ceremony, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated, "Sabiha Gökçen is the third busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic after Istanbul Airport and Antalya Airport. By the end of the year, we expect the number of passengers traveling from our airport to exceed 37 million. In line with the growth in the sector and the development plans of the airport, we decided to build the second runway in 2012. Subsequently, we started the work and completed the second runway and its complementary works with a total investment of $970 million. With the commissioning of the new runway at Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, the capacity will exceed 85 million passengers annually."
Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu mentioned that the airport's flight traffic capacity would initially reach 1,400 and eventually increase to 1,900. Minister Uraloğlu also noted that the airport is expected to reach 37 million passengers by the end of the year, and construction has begun for a new terminal building with a capacity of 40 million passengers per year.
