Istanbul Airport

✅ Trip Verified | It has some good but a lot of bad things. Despite some of what I've read I would call it highly accommodating in some ways while being intentionally unfriendly in others. The information desk calls in a live video of an agent in the language of your choice. It was well signed and easy for me, someone that has never traveled this side of the world and totally alone, to find my way around with significant ease. The individual accommodations for special use or needs was also impressive. It's massive and quite beautiful. That said, its primary purpose is not to ensure you a smooth trip, rather to is to ensure you buy as much as humanly possible. This is where the problem comes in. If you aren't willing to shell out a A LOT of money then you will not be accommodated. There are lounges and hotels, showers and business centers for hundreds of euros and some have mentioned the airport itself is needlessly large and is intentionally so. The terminals are so wildly far apart as to mandate you sift through an endless regurgitation of a senselessly overpriced 1980's American mall. You'll see the same Bvlgari and Gucci stores 3+ times. The same Behemoth duty free shops are present ad nauseum. But when I say expensive I mean at least double. Everything down to the Wi-Fi is billed and at a high rate. No plugs, little room to sit or actually rest. Flight gates are not posted until 30 minutes before take-off and then are frequently switched. I waited until 7pm for the time of my 720 flight and it sent me to B terminal. When I arrived at B terminal it switched to F. At a cold hard sprint it took me almost 30 minutes to get there. This is both intentional and malicious; its sole purpose is to make you walk by everything one last time. I would boil it down to call it princess toast. If you're unfamiliar with princess toast its toast with glitter and whipped cream, cherries and sprinkles with rainbows and unicorns. Sure its glitz and glam but in the end it's still toast.

✅ Trip Verified | It was my first time ever flying and transiting on the new airport of Istanbul. We arrived from Dubai andlike 3 hours of transit until we had our flight back to Vienna. The airport is huge, modern, new so you will walk long distances. The bathrooms are clean and you have enough to refresh yourself. If the food court is busy you will have problems to find a free table to sit down. As the airport has lack of seats most people sit and relax here without eating or drinking anything. I dont liked the options to pick from and i felt they are overpriced. If you register with your passport you only get 1 hour of free internet whats not the fastest. Turkey is famous for its shops and good quality, cheap products. Well you can forget the good deals here. Every price is in EUR and you dont find anything whats worth buying. Even the known sweets and alcohol is overpriced. There are not enough smoking terraces and the ones what we visited are very crowded.

✅ Trip Verified | Poor experience. Have to pay for everything eg no free WiFi (advertised only 1 hour free WiFi but didn't work after swiping my passport), have to pay after 1 hour. No free trolleys have to pay a deposit which was not refunded afterwards even after following instructions. No customer service to ask. No signage for free water fountain but eventually found one. Advertised museum costs €13. Duty free Shops and restaurants are more expensive than European airports. The metro to downtown the lines do not connect (Google maps not accurate) so you'll need to cross a park and roads to connect to the other line, do not bother if you have luggage. Very disappointed with my experience.

✅ Trip Verified | I hate the fact that the airport has limit for free internet. Istanbul airport is a very big transit hub yet having this kind of set-up for internet isn’t good at all. Everything in the airport is over-priced. I’ll try to avoid this airport at all cost.

✅ Trip Verified | 18 hour transit on the way out and 6 hour transit coming back. Horrible experience on both legs. You get one measly hour of free WIFI subject to messing about scanning your passport and collecting print outs of passwords. There is nowhere really to sit as people tend to stretch across two or three seats. There is a 'sleep pod' area but it's €20 an hour! Basically for a seat with a 'roof' over it. The entire (gigantic!) airport is a shopping mall selling the sort of unnecessary overpriced rubbish that no one ever buys! The choice of food is dismal, just American junk options at restaurant prices. A burger and chips cost me a whopping €24. Staff are unfriendly and it's just a horrible atmosphere. The airport has a museum but unlike Schiphol's, Istanbul charges €13 admission!

✅ Trip Verified | While gleaming new, Istanbul Airport suffers from some of the ills of planning with no consideration of the real situations of travelers. Internet access is incredibly inconvenient, food options are dismal (for a country with excellent food like Turkey, this is very surprising), moving from one part to the other is slow and inconvenient. Airport staff is just ok. Depending on SMS messages for wifi connectivity is a very wrong idea. First, roaming is difficult between many countries. But mostly, even if it works, it adds incredible hassle for a situation where one needs fast, clear, and quick data to let someone home one made it safely, to warn somebody one has arrived, to check a last-minute hotel information. None of that should ever depend on SMS messages, registrations or having to look for a kiosk somewhere in an enormous airport. That's a serious issue Istanbul Airport needs to address.

Not Verified | First it is too big. Out of human proportions. For example if you are at the Gate F and going towards the Gate A you need at least 20 minutes of fast walking. Imagine having a 5-10 hand bag and imagine you are not in the best health condition. So looking for any service you need at least 5-10 min of walking. This airport exhaust you. It make even the most simplest trip a tiresome experience. Second the worst airport for connecting flights. You need to have at least 3 hours between two connecting flights, otherwise you'll loose the flight, as it happened to me several times only in January 2023. Simply skip this airport and its Turkish Airlines which dominates with majority of flights.

✅ Trip Verified | Why is accessing the WiFi such a pain in the neck in Turkish airports? Questions, name, ticket number, agree to an NDA in Skyteam lounge, then tells me my surname is incorrect. The main airport Wi-Fi is a mission requiring an SMS with a code to access an hour’s internet, and the Turkish lounge requires you to go to a kiosk (hidden) to get a voucher.

Not Verified | This is not an airport but a shopping centre with a few runways. Prepare to walk along miles and miles of tax free shops while trying to find your connection gate or the exit. Endless designer hand bag shops and food joints in immense halls without any automated walk ways in these central halls to speed up your walk from one gate to the next. Poor signage and no maps in sight. Its is ridiculous Turkish Airlines sells tickets with a connection time of 90 minutes as they are unable to facilitate the transfer process. After landing be prepared for a tour of the airport taxiing to the arrival gate. It took 20 minutes for my flight to reach the gate. Avoid.

✅ Trip Verified | The 5 hours I had to spend waiting in transit felt like no time at all. There are many nice stores and seating areas. I was able to find an area where I could do push-ups undisturbed. If you want to walk, this airport is huge, and you can walk from one end to the other and see plenty of interesting things in between. I did not feel threatened, since airports can have bad or unprofessionally executed security. Security was professional and not rude even though there were several security measures, and large amounts of people to be processed.