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Antalya Gazipaşa Airport is an airport currently in service in the Alanya area of the Antalya province in Turkey. The Airport opened for domestic flights in July 2010 with daily flights from Istanbul with Bora Jet. International flights are scheduled to begin in time for the 2011 holiday season. The new airport is only 30 minutes by road from Alanya.
The airport was actually finished in 1999, and has a planned annual passenger capacity of 500,000 passengers, a terminal area of 2,144 square meters and a parking lot with a capacity of 105 vehicles, but was not opened for operation. Talks were held in 2006, with reports commissioned by the national government, local government, and tourist organizations to actually commence operation of the airport. Finally, the decision was made clear in 2007 to operate the airport after numerous bids were submitted to operate the airport, with Tepe Akfen Ventures Airports Holding (TAV), winning the bid to operate the airport for 25 years with the condition of paying the government $50,000 a year, and offering a 65% share in profit.
TAV Airports Holding is now updating and expanding the airport, including lengthening the runway to 1,825m in order to handle international operations, among other things.
Foreign residents are impatient to learn which airlines will operate out of Gazipasa. Gulcin Gunder, president of Alanya’s tourism association (ALTID), made a statement to the press that TAV is already in talks with Easyjet, a low cost UK airline which has routes across Europe. Easyjet already fly from the UK to Antalya and Istanbul.
Alanya patriots are lobbying for the name of the airport to include ‘Alanya’ claiming that Gazipasa isn’t well known outside of Turkey. So far there has been no official comment from TAV or the Ministry of Tourism regarding the name.
Airlines: TRANSAVIA :
Amsterdam (begins 27 April 2011 every wednesday till end of October: charterflights only to be booked at www.neckermann.nl/vliegtickets (Dutch language only) or at all Thomas Cook Travelshops in Holland)
Airlines: BORAJET:
Istanbul-Sabiha Gökçen (stopped operation in January 2011, maybe start operations again in May 2011))
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