Turkey opens fastest metro line to Europe’s busiest airport

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan has opened Istanbul’s new high-speed metro line connecting the city to the mega Istanbul Airport, known as “Europe’s busiest in 2022”, Daily Sabah newspaper reported.

The 34-kilometre metro link marks the first railway connection with Turkey’s largest airport from the Kagıthane neighbourhood.

Erdogan said that the Kagıthane-Istanbul Airport Metro Line will have a capacity of 800,000 passengers per day with the distance covered in 24 minutes.

Istanbul Airport, officially declared open in late October 2018 before becoming fully operational in April 2019, is dubbed the busiest airport in Europe, with an average of 1,156 daily flights last year, the report said.

The president said the government will connect the new line with the Zincirlikuyu Metrobus stop in a few months.

Transport and infrastructure minister Adil Karaismailoglu previously said that the metro line to the Istanbul Airport would be the fastest metro in Europe, travelling of speeds up to 120 kilometres per hour.

Turkey is also looking to connect a high-speed train line between Istanbul and Ankara to the two airports in the metropolis, the report stated.