Istanbul Airport transfers

Istanbul Airport sits on the European side, out at Arnavutköy on the north western edge of the city. The M11 metro runs from beneath the terminal and HAVAIST coaches leave from the arrivals level, so getting into the city is not the hard part. The hard part is the stretch neither of them covers: a platform is not a hotel door, and that last leg with the luggage is what a private car is for.

Look at what the metro actually does and the gap gets concrete. The airport is the seventh station of fifteen on the M11, and the city end of the line is Gayrettepe, six stops away. Gayrettepe is a fine place to arrive if you are changing onto the M2 and carrying nothing. It is a long way from Sultanahmet, from the Bosphorus, and from most of the addresses people actually book. Ride the line the other way and it runs out to Halkalı, further from the centre still.

The coaches reach more of the city. Thirteen HAVAIST lines leave the arrivals level and between them they serve most of the districts a visitor can name. They also keep to a timetable rather than to your flight, they stop where the route says rather than where you are staying, and they charge every passenger separately with a fee on top for each bag. For one traveller with a rucksack that is the sensible choice, and we will say so on the route pages. For a family of four with cases it rarely is.

So the arrival is what we sell, not the drive. Your chauffeur waits in the arrivals hall with a name board and watches the flight rather than the clock, which means a late landing moves the pickup instead of costing you the ride. The cases go in the boot once and come out at the door. The price is for the vehicle, not for each seat, and it is agreed before you fly, so the number you were quoted in your own currency is the number the journey costs.

Who lands here matters more than how far it is. A visitor with a hotel booking wants the door, not the nearest station. Someone arriving for a hospital appointment is often tired and rarely alone. A group heading for a cruise departure or an intercity coach is working to a connection that costs far more than the transfer would have. The destination pages below sort the airport's routes into exactly those cases: districts and landmarks, hotels, hospitals, shopping centres, and the ports, rail and coach terminals.

Every route has its own page. It carries the distance we drive, the road most of the drive runs on, what the journey costs in each vehicle class, and how the public transport alternative compares on that same journey rather than in general. If you have not chosen an airport yet, the area pages are the ones to read: they put both airports side by side for a single destination and say which is nearer, and by how much.

Terminal address: Tayakadın, Terminal Caddesi No:1, 34283 Arnavutköy/İstanbul