CEO of Istanbul Airport: Photo alone not good enough to explain what happened at the airport

The CEO of IGA, the operator of Istanbul Airport said that it had not been easy to accommodate 20 thousand people stranded at the airport, which was closed in the snow, adding the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) had not reached them.

Due to heavy snowfall in the city, on January 24, the airport traffic was stopped. The airport was closed for almost a day. Thousands of passengers were stranded at the airport, while tourists were seen taking action saying “We want a hotel”. The construction of Istanbul Airport to a remote point of the city and the fact that the metro has not yet been built also caused passengers to be unable to return to the city.

‘100 thousand truck movements were necessary’

The CEO went on to share following as well:

At the core of this issue, there is a struggle when it snows because you are doing a job against nature. Airports are prepared for this, and we are prepared for it. This is an extraordinary snowfall. This snowfall has hit the west of Istanbul. As a result of this, there was a serious accumulation of snow at our airport.

It would take more than 100 thousand truck movements for us to remove this falling snow. That’s 7 hours. Snow does not give you the opportunity and there is a matter of visibility. If you spend hours in a storm, you don’t have a chance to intervene. If the weather had allowed 1-1.5 hours, we would have seen the result of this. It snowed incessantly for seven hours, and 40 cm of snow accumulated.