Bigger than Manhattan: The record-breaking airport megahub that conquered the world

Bigger than Manhattan: The record-breaking airport megahub that conquered the world

Standing at the crossroad of continents, Istanbul has long been a global linchpin.

As Byzantium and then Constantinople, it controlled trade routes along the Silk Road and maritime passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

In the golden age of railways, Istanbul was the end point of the Orient Express, at the very cusp of Europe and Asia.

Now, in the 21st century, iGA Istanbul Airport is ruling the skies, having just overtaken London Heathrow as the best-connected airport on the planet.

“They’ve finally got the number one position,” says John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, a global travel data provider which has just released its Megahubs 2026 Index, comparing the world’s top airports.

The rankings are generated by comparing the number of scheduled connections to and from international flights, with the number of destinations served from the airport. They do this through a snapshot look at the busiest day of the year, which this year was August 2.

Gaining the top spot is “an important achievement for iGA Istanbul Airport and reflects the position we have built as a global aviation hub,” airport CEO Selahattin Bilgen tells CNN. “Today, we already serve approximately 350 destinations around the world, with significant room to grow further.”

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is third place in this year’s ranking, followed by Kuala Lumpur at No.4 and Chicago O’Hare at No.5.

‘Unassailable’
It’s been a swift and impressive rise for the award-winning $12 billion Istanbul Airport, which opened to much fanfare in 2018, about 20 miles outside Istanbul on the European side. This is a hub built for scale: Its huge 1.4-million-square-meter terminal is the world’s largest under one roof and the whole 76.5-million-square-meter site is bigger than Manhattan.

More than 84 million passengers pass through each year, making it the eighth busiest airport in the world. However, the long-term plan is to increase capacity to 200 million passengers per year, which is double the annual number currently handled by Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport.