Services and shopping at the airport
As for amenities to enjoy in the impressive Istanbul airport before your departure, you will be truly amazed by their diversity as there are lots of opportunities for passenger how to spend time waiting for their plane to fly from the airport.
For families and kids, the next options become a salvation at the airport:
- Security control checkpoints for families with newborns and toddlers.
- Baby care rooms and diaper changing stations.
- Children’s playground sites devoted to aviation across the airport.
- Strollers and buggies to transfer families and kids within the airport from gate to gate so as not to run mad in a hassle in the last minutes.
Special Young Lounge for a family with kids and teenagers with Playstations, board games, comics, etc.
For shopping lovers, Istanbul airport is an impressive retail place due to numerous shop spots including expansive duty-free stores, pharmacies, pet shops, and souvenir shops where you can find gifts for any anniversary or special occasion. Its duty free area forms a real Luxury District and makes miracles with its diversity of brands and deluxe items. Therefore you can hardly leave it without a purchase.
For businessmen and people who do not like to waste time when they travel, there are:
- SPA and beauty salons,
- Art exhibitions and museums,
- Banks, currency exchange stations, and ATMs,
- Business meeting rooms in lounges and working stations with PCs
- Convenient transportation with easy access from both sides of Istanbul airport to the metro stations, bus stops, car rentals, and taxis.
As for your meals, you can be sure that you’ll enjoy eating at the airport at its best. Still, do you know that there are at least over 40 bars, restaurants, and cafes working officially throughout the airport? So you can choose the best dining options and service without obligatory transfer to Taxim Square or Sultanahmet district to get pleasure from spices and tastes of Turkish cuisine.
Options for sleeping in the new Istanbul Airport
As for the sleeping options, Istanbul airport confirms its unofficial high status as a family-friendly and customer-oriented airport. If you need to stay in IST for a while and get a nap, you can use the following sleeping options available here:
- Nap zones where separate cabins are available for comfortable and secluded sleeping.
- Sleep pod area where you can sleep for a while in comfortable new chairs.
- Lounges offered both by the airport and by air flight operators.
- Two hotels where you can always rent a room for a night or pay for a couple of hours to take a rest.
So, it’s not hard to wait till your planned flight’s time as Istanbul airport is a well-developed transfer facility.
How many airports are in Istanbul?
Meanwhile, new Istanbul International Airport is the most enormous in size airport where most arrivals and departures take place worldwide. Nevertheless, it is not the one-and-only airport in Istanbul. It’s surprising but there are three of them in total around the city.
Besides the International airport, there are two additional airports here:
- Odious Ataturk Airport was the predecessor of IST. It finished its operation as a multimodal airport in 2019, and IST actually inherited all its operational processes and airlines that Ataturk airport handle to it. However, Ataturk Airport is not abandoned. It hosts private jets today. The major reason for its dismissal from the throne of the biggest Eastern airport was the growth of transportation load and, at once, time-consuming infrastructure which made Ataturk airport becoming not comfortable for passengers who needed to get to their transfer flight without missing baggage or being late.
- The second one is Sabiha Gökçen International Airport. It is smaller, and it also operates in Istanbul. It is located on the opposite, Asian side of Istanbul and has been working since 2001 for local passengers needs. The name of Sabiha Gökçen International Airport goes from the first female aviator worldwide who was of Turkish origin. Today, Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) serves more as the hub for domestic flights carriers and local airlines maintenance. For example, the Anadolu Jet carrier and Pegasus Airlines host in Sabiha Gökçen with their planes landing in this airport.
