Antalya Airport

Antalya airport is the worst I have departed from in recent years. With huge queues and sweltering heat the government owned refreshment outlets were charging positively extortionate prices for bottles of water. The one good side was that despite all the threats and warnings about excess baggage charges by the holiday company the actual check in staff couldn't care less about the few extra kilos as they had several hundred passengers to deal with and knew it was silly anyway.

The airport seems completely overwhelmed by the growth in tourism to this part of Turkey. We in November 2003 had to wait outside the building for some time just to get in since even with all entry doors open the baggage scanning and x-raying stations could not cope with the influx of passengers. There were no queues rather a mass of people jostling to get inside as swiftly as circumstances would permit with the result that people were trying to block each other with bags carts etc. An ugly first impression. Once inside it was the familiar situation of many mostly charter airports: only two to three counters open to check in more than two hundred people for a flight. Result: more standing in queues. Finally it is necessary at this airport to have hand baggage x-rayed and another body scan when entering the gate holdroom. There is just one bag scanner and one body scan gate per holdroom - and the security staff decided to open these about 25 minutes before scheduled departure. Result: more standing in queues and a departure delay due completely to slow passenger processing of 35 minutes. All in all two hours of standing in various queues just to be processed do not leave the impression of an airport that works well. This is the first privatized terminal in Turkey a joint venture with Frankfurt Airport and their own publicity claims they have the goal of making the passenger experience as pleasant a possible. Well unless they liaise better with security forces and handling companies to loosen bottlenecks they will not achieve that goal.

Our first experience of the Airport was a large queue outside the actual terminal building waiting for baggage and body scanning. A very "off hand" official operating the scanner seemed determined to upset as many passengers as possible by his gruff and officious manner. The remaining impression that I have of the Airport is that it was dirty and and the products on sale were ludicrously overpriced. Compare a can of coke Manchester International Airport c £1 to Antalya £3+. On the positive side the internal architecture is excellent.

Antalya Airport's new terminal - it's a huge area full of duty free shops and restaurants. Although Antalya is mainly used for charters flights to Germany and other EU countries the old terminal was so small that it was impossible to take many passengers.