With its enormous size, Istanbul Airport has a unique feature called “parallel landing”.
That is when two planes fly to the runways simultaneously and land with parallel courses. This feature is available only at two European airports.
avianews.com reader has shared a fantastic video depicting one of the parallel landings at Istanbul Airport.
The video shows a sleek Qatar Airways Boeing 777 heading to the Istanbul Airport runway at a low altitude. The passenger has filmed the video on board of another plane that was landing. The distance between aircraft was only 1.6 km.
Such a distance for aviation is small, but there wasn’t any danger to the safety in this case. The Turkish aviation authority allows this type of parallel landing at Istanbul Airport. The safety specialists first checked the procedure and only then approved it.
Parallel landings significantly increase the number of take-offs and landings at Istanbul Airport, which takes the first place among European airports in passenger traffic numbers.
Istanbul Airport claims it is the first airport in Turkey with parallel landings and the second in Europe after Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, where this procedure is also allowed.
For the time being, Istanbul Airport has five parallel runways. Three runways can work independently, and two runways serve as reserved runways in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
