The old city airport of Istanbul is an international airport and offers several international connections.
Passengers can move from the arrival hall to the departure hall without passport control.
The boarding pass was checked, however.
I only asked one short question at Pegasus desk, but the personell was very unfriendly and rude.
The athmosphere here is very bad.
You can smell the bad attitude and scammers everywhere.
I have never seen prices like this.
A beef fillet 150 grams costs 42 Euros, even more than in Switzerland!
For comparison:
This is the menu of Upperdeck restaurant in Zurich airport:
200 grams of finest Swiss beef (the ones with the cow bells around their necks) for 38 Swiss franks.
The same is true for bar prices.
I had a fresh orange juice and a natural croissant for 960 Turkish lira. This equals 20 Euros at the time of writing (October 2025).
Total control with face scanning
Like more and more airports, for example Geneva airport, they are promoting self-service passport controls through electronic gates.
Do not pass through these gates but insist on manual passport control by a human custom’s officer!
If you use them, they add your face scan to the passport or ID card you presented.
After that you can be tracked everywhere by the cameras with face detection.
Conclusion: avoid this airport at all means.
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