With new terminal, Istanbul's second airport to serve 20 mln passengers a year

Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, the smaller of the city’s two main airports, will have the capacity to serve 20 million passengers a year by 2012 following the opening of a new international terminal building. The new terminal, along with additional buildings, opened with a ceremony over the weekend attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The construction, which began on May 3 under the partnership of Turkish, Malaysian and Indian companies, finished a year earlier than expected. "The airport had 4 million passengers when we made our bid,” said Nihat Ozdemir, the chairman of Limak Holding, which bid €2.28 billion, including value added tax, to operate the airport with GMR Infrastructure and Malaysia Airports Holdings. "Today its capacity has reached 6.1 million," he said. "The project’s term was normally 30 months but we resolved to finish it within 18 months. Today, we have finished it a year early, which is a world record. Passenger numbers are expected to rise to 8.5 million by 2010." Sabiha Gokcen will also expand its connections next week with the launch of Turkish Airlines (THY) international flights from the airport, he said. "We expect an increase of 15 percent in the numbers of passengers at Sabiha Gokcen next year," said G.M. Rao, the chair of Limak Holding's Indian partner GMR. "Istanbul Ataturk Airport is already overloaded. We see the future at Sabiha Gokcen.”