Istanbul Airport has set a new benchmark in European aviation by serving 272,132 passengers on July 27, 2025, making it the airport with the highest single-day passenger traffic across Europe.
This consisted of 134,893 arriving passengers and 137,239 departing.
This figure also surpasses a previous record held by London Heathrow Airport, which handled 268,000 passengers on June 30, 2024.
In April the Turkish airport became the first in Europe to implement triple runway operations, a system which allows three runways to handle simultaneous takeoffs and landings. As a result, the airport’s hourly air traffic capacity has now increased from 120 to 148 aircraft movements.
The introduction of this new system will play a crucial role in supporting the airport’s vision of accommodating 200 million passengers annually.