Istanbul Grand Airport (IGA) board member Nihat Özdemir said when the first phase of Istanbul's third airport comes into operation, operations at Istanbul Atatürk International Airport will cease.

Özdemir held a press conference during the Airport Council International's (ACI) Airport Exchange Conference 2015, which was organized by the ACI's European and Asia-Pacific regions. Referring to the fact that the first phase of Istanbul's third airport, which is planned to be the largest in the world, will come into service in 2018, Özdemir said it is estimated that the airport will host between 80 million and 90 million passengers in the first year. "We expect that we can achieve this capacity and reach up to 100 million passengers in the first year," Özdemir said, adding that the construction work on the airport was very efficient in November despite the weather conditions in the fall. "We expect our work pace will drop during the winter months where we estimate to work with between 65 and 75 percent efficiency. We will accelerate our work pace as of April," he said.

Providing information about the financing of the airport's construction, Özdemir said they used a bridging loan of 750 million euros before the initial loans, and total expenditures made since the beginning of November has exceeded 1 billion euros. According to Özdemir's statements, when the first phase of Istanbul's third airport comes into service, Atatürk Airport will cease to operate while Sabiha Gökçen Airport will continue to operate. According to Özdemir, this is because it would be useless to continue operations at Istanbul Atatürk International Airport as there will be no connecting flights or cargo operations there.

It is expected the third Istanbul airport will accommodate around 80 million passengers while Sabiha Gökçen Airport will accommodate between 30 million and 35 million passengers in 2018. Istanbul's overall capacity could reach around 120 million passengers in 2018, Özdemir said.

In response to a question about the future of the loans, which are provided by DenizBank, the Turkish subsidiary of Russian Sberbank, Özdemir said DenizBank has a 500-million-euro share of the loans, which are part of the 4.5 billion finance package. "As Sberbank fulfills all financing terms, we do not think that we will face problems regarding financing," he added.

The airport is planned to serve an average of 200 million people annually when all four phases become operational. Currently, a total of 8,000 people are employed on the project; however, when the construction work reaches the most intensive level, it will offer jobs to a total of 100,000 people. Also, there are 2,500 trucks and heavy equipment machines deployed at the site.

The airport will have 165 passenger jetways, four terminals connected with a railway system, three maintenance buildings, eight air traffic control towers, six runways, 16 taxiways, a 6.5 million-square-meter airport hangar with a capacity of 500 airplanes, an approximately 70,000 vehicle capacity parking area - touted as the largest airport parking lot in Europe - a clinic, fire department, hotels, a convention center and recycling and waste disposal plants. The airport will also host 150 airlines. The airport will be connected to the Istanbul metro, and multi-lane highways will be built to facilitate access. The area where the airport is being built was chosen after the ecological balance, wind data and the natural and artificial obstacles of the region were taken into consideration.