Sabiha Gökçen International Airport (SAW) is one of two international airports serving Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. Located 32 km (20 mi) southeast of the city center, Sabiha Gökçen Airport is in the Asian part of the bi-continental Istanbul and serves as the hub for AnadoluJet and Pegasus Airlines. The facility is named after Sabiha Gökçen, the adoptive daughter of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the first female fighter pilot in the world. Although Istanbul Airport, located 63 km (39 mi) west of the European side of Istanbul, is larger, Sabiha Gökçen is still one of the largest airports in the country.

The airport was built because Atatürk International Airport (located on the European side) was not large enough to meet the booming passenger demands (both domestic and international). The airport opened on 8 January 2001. In June 2007, Turkish conglomerate Limak Holding, India’s GMR Group and Malaysia Airport Holding Berhad (MAHB) consortium gained the contract for upgrading and maintaining the airport. In mid-2008, the ground was broken to upgrade the international terminal to handle 25 million passengers annually. The new terminal was inaugurated on 31 October 2009.

SAW’s international terminal capacity originally was 3 million passengers per year and the domestic terminal capacity was 0.5 million passengers per year. In 2010, Sabiha Gökçen airport handled 11,129,472 passengers, a 71% increase compared to 2009. The airport was planning (in 2011) to host 25 million passengers by 2023 but has already received and handled more than 35 million passengers by 2019.

In September 2010, the airport was voted the World’s Best Airport at the World Low-Cost Airlines Congress in London and received the award. The other awards received by the airport in 2010 were: Turkey’s Most Successful Tourism Investment 2010, the highly commended award from Routes Europe, and the Airport Traffic Growth Award by Airline News & Network Analysis.

With 28,285,578 passengers and 206,180 aircraft movements in 2015, Sabiha Gökçen International Airport is the third busiest single-runway airport in the world, after Mumbai and London Gatwick. However, both Mumbai and Gatwick have two runways and are only considered “single-runway” because they can only operate the second runway if the main one is out of use. This makes Sabiha Gökçen the world’s busiest true single-runway airport.

A second runway is currently being built and is expected to be operational towards the end of 2022. The second runway will increase the hourly capacity from 40 to 80 aircraft movements.