Istanbul Airport

Not Verified | I recently traveled through Istanbul Airport, and my experience was disappointing. One major drawback was the exorbitant prices for food, drinks, and shopping items. A simple coffee or sandwich set me back significantly more than expected, and even basic necessities in the retail shops were overpriced, making it hard to justify any purchases. Additionally, the airport seemed chaotic and overcrowded, with many passengers stranded and resorting to sleeping on the floors due to delayed or canceled flights. This led to a disorganized atmosphere, with people sprawled out across waiting areas, making navigation difficult. Overall, my time at Istanbul Airport was far from pleasant, and I hope to see improvements in the future.

Not Verified | The airport is beautiful but its a big mess. The staff doesn't know English well and always guides you to the wrong place. In my case, the connecting flight was displayed and when i reached to the gate after walking for 30 minutes with my kids, they changed it again and then it was in the extreme opposite direction which means another 30-40 minutes walk. How can you expect someone to run to catch his flight with the kids for such a long distance? The signage is very good and helpful. Food area is also good and provide a good selection of food to the travelers.

✅ Trip Verified | Any airport that does not offer unlimited free wifi from my perspective, is not serving its passengers. Passengers can only get 1 hour free wifi by scanning their passport. Prices at the airport are higher than they need to be. Ground transportation is a bit of a mess with congestion and confusion. The airport is grand in design with a lot of wasted space - must be expensive to heat and cool? This airport like many new airports feels more like a shopping mall than a hub for air travel

✅ Trip Verified | Istanbul Airport has big ambitions but is far from the standards found at the best airports in the world. Although the building is spacious and open, passport control was fairly efficient with several gates to pass through, and bathroom facilities were modern and clean, these positives do not outweigh the many negatives. Firstly, food and drinks are extraordinarily expensive: 15 euros for a small beer, 40 euros for a kebab, 20 euros for a menu at McDonalds. For comparison, even in the most touristic areas of Istanbul, a large beer would typically cost about a third of that and would not come in a plastic cup. It just leaves you with a bitter taste of the airport seeing its visitors as walking wallets. The same vibe comes from the types of shops that occupy a large part of the airport. Maybe people willing to pay 50 euros for a simple airport meal are looking for a Louis Vuitton bag, but from the empty shops it seems that this audience is very limited. There is a huge Duty Free section, but they all sell exactly the same products. Secondly, WiFi is restricted and requires you to swipe your passport through a machine. Not only do you have no idea what is happening with that information (and why do they need my passport information in the first place?), it also just gives you one hour access. Not a standard that modern-day airports should have. Thirdly, boarding was chaotic despite our airline using boarding zones, but the gate crew did not care and just let everyone board at the same time. I would have been annoyed if I had paid for a ticket with priority boarding. Lastly, we used this airport for a city trip to Istanbul, but the airport is 40 kilometers away from the city center. That would not be such an issue if there was a simple public transport connection, but taking the metro requires you to change 4-5 times to reach downtown Istanbul, and the airport busses take 1.5 hours to reach a metro station on the outskirts of the city center. Luckily there are plenty of taxis around, but they come with a high chance of being scammed (our driver on the way back tried to make us pay twice). All in all, not the best experience.

✅ Trip Verified | Spectacular airport with very poor services and extremely expensive prices. It makes no sense to be a transit Airport and give only 1 hour free Wifi, to have to pay for luggage cart, and that the cheapest menu like McDonald's is 20€ or even more. One soft drink or water is 6€. Worse experience than in Dubai, Doha, Madrid, Paris. Really It makes no sense.

✅ Trip Verified | Firstly, this airport is big and has concourses from A to F. To get from one concourse to the other, you are required to get to a central main area. I arrived at concourse F and my next flight was from concourse B. With what might seem as a reasonable connection time, at this airport, you have to have more. There are no buses, monorails, or modes of transport from one concourse to the other. Distances are vast and it is always crowded. If you are anything thing but a fit youngster, you are in for a anxious and stressful trek after a long flight. Remember that gates close 15 minutes before departure. Now, there are these youngsters on Segways with a seat that can transport you from one gate to the other. It blew my mind that they charge US$20 for that service. There are golf carts that can take you around but they are so few given the immense distance to be covered. I wonder how many people miss their connections. One other thing that I noted was that the airport staff including those at the transfer and help desks are poor English speakers and get defensive and rude when they cannot communicate coherently. At the gates, boarding is chaotic. If you are boarding a flight to the US, the additional screening of in cabin luggage and of the person is a sham. 4-5 people are packed to small table and are asked to lay all your in cabin luggage, empty all your pockets, watches, belts, wallet, etc. There is absolutely no room and I saw people trying to sort out their cell phone from their neighbors belongings. All the while the people who are supposed to be screening are literally shouting and herding passengers through. So much for security screening. Everything at this airport is expensive. Consider that the country's inflation stands at above 60%. If you are connecting through this airport, give yourself plenty of time. There are enough distractions to lure you to shop as the airport is one big shopping mall. Stay focused or you will miss your flight. And, the ground staff are not easy to communicate with. Good luck.

✅ Trip Verified | Had one of the worst experience with Turkish Airlines at the connecting airport. No one was there to guide us further, they closed the door early. We barely made it ourselves. The airport staff was discourteous and unhospitable and critiqued elderly passengers for not speaking English while they barely could speak 2 words in English. Overall a very poor experience.

Not Verified | Limited number of seating areas. If Istanbul airport wanted to become hub for transitory passengers it has to provide adequate resting place for transitory passengers. So they can have adequate water fountains, sitting areas and mobile charging points for their layovers. After a long flight no passenger likes to sit on the floor so airport staff shouldn't be rude to such passengers instead should rightly direct them to empty seating areas.

✅ Trip Verified | A superficially impressive airport with more high end shops then anyone could possibly need. But some serious irritations. Transit was slow and cumbersome; WiFi provision was shocking - both the stingy 1 hour allocation and mechanism to activate it, plus the speed once finally confirmed. The food prices were absolutely extortionate, especially given the state of the Turkish economy. It’s as of they are trying to retrospectively fund the airport by seriously overcharging. Will avoid in future.

✅ Trip Verified | The worst airport I’ve ever visited! The foods are unreasonably expensive with so little variation. Only burgers and bread-based dishes. For example a noodle box with drink cost you 750 TL or 21 EURO. The cheapest McD meals is 18 EURO. That’s ridiculous. Also, very stingy airport with only 1 hour free WIFI. And you have to register your passport in the kiosk to have the password for the WiFi. Sometimes, the machine cannot read your passport so you have to do it over and over again. Never ever I experience something ridiculous like this in my entire life. Pay for WiFi in the airport? And you claimed to be a 5-star airport? Learn from Airports in Asia.