Turkey’s Istanbul airport, which connects Europe and Asia, has been temporarily closed due to heavy snowfall.
Authorities were forced to suspend flights on Monday (January 24th) as the entire airport was covered in snow after the snowfall, according to a report by Qatar-based Al Jazeera.
Turkey’s Istanbul Airport is one of the largest in the world and the busiest in Europe. Flights at the airport have been temporarily suspended due to the recent heavy snowfall in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, including Turkey and Greece.
According to Al Jazeera, the airport was declared closed on Monday morning until 4 am (Turkish time) due to snowfall. Later, as the situation did not improve, the flight suspension was extended by another point to 1 pm local time (4 pm Bangladesh time). Then the next decision will be taken considering the situation.
Hussein Keskin, head of Turkey’s Central Airport Authority, said in a statement on Twitter that “no flight has been able to take off or land on the runway due to the persistent bad weather.” For this reason, the flight closure period has been extended to 1 pm.
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Meanwhile, heavy snowfall has closed Istanbul’s airport, schools, corona vaccination center and shopping malls. There have also been disruptions in transportation management. Many people are stranded in the city due to the continuous snowfall.
Al Jazeera reports that the roof of a cargo terminal at Istanbul airport collapsed after heavy snow fell. It collapsed because of the ice on the roof. However, no one was injured in the incident.
The planes, which were stranded on the ice, arrived from various parts of the Middle East and Africa and were scheduled to depart on Monday to various destinations in Asia and Europe.
Istanbul Airport is named after one of the largest airports in the world and the busiest in Europe. The airport was inaugurated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the 95th Independence Day in November 2016.
Work on the airport is expected to be completed by 2023. 200 million passengers a year will be able to use this airport since it was fully operational. In 2021, more than 36 million passengers used this airport.
TM
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