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🇹🇷 Istanbul, Türkiye

Istanbul Airport (IST)

Istanbul Airport (IST, LTFM) serves Istanbul, Türkiye. Flights leaving IST left an average of 13.5 min late in the twelve months to July 2026, the 29th least delayed of 88 busy European airports.

Delays at IST

Average departure delay per flight: 13.5 min over the twelve months to July 2026. Delays were worst in January (18.3 min) and lightest in May (10.8 min).

Average departure delay per flight from IST, all causes, by month. Green is the least delayed month, orange the most.
See the figures
MonthAverage departure delayDepartures
August 202516.2 min25,521
September 202515.1 min24,142
October 202514.0 min24,159
November 202511.3 min22,263
December 202514.3 min22,666
January 202618.3 min22,468
February 202613.0 min19,580
March 202612.1 min21,353
April 202611.9 min21,661
May 202610.8 min22,705
June 202611.2 min22,772
July 202613.6 min25,185

Air traffic flow restrictions held 0.2% of arrivals at IST for more than 15 minutes in the twelve months to August 2026, most often because of weather (98% of those delay minutes).

Departure delay counts every cause, from the airline to air traffic control, and is measured against the scheduled time. Source: EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal, summarised by TripStow. EUROCONTROL does not endorse TripStow.

Busiest routes from IST

  1. Paris (CDG)1,010,453 passengers
  2. Athens (ATH)981,717 passengers
  3. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)866,371 passengers
  4. Frankfurt am Main (FRA)842,741 passengers
  5. Milano (MXP)774,884 passengers
  6. Rome (FCO)668,200 passengers
  7. Berlin Brandenburg (BER)652,227 passengers
  8. Duesseldorf (DUS)554,554 passengers
  9. Bucharest (OTP)553,080 passengers
  10. Vienna (VIE)529,836 passengers

Passengers in 2024, both directions together. Source: Eurostat (CC BY 4.0), summarised by TripStow.

Questions and answers

How delayed are flights at Istanbul (IST)?
Flights leaving IST left an average of 13.5 min late in the twelve months to July 2026, the 29th least delayed of 88 busy European airports.
Which month has the most delays at IST?
January 2026, when flights left an average of 18.3 minutes late; the lightest month was May 2026 (10.8 minutes).
Why are flights delayed at IST?
EUROCONTROL records why air traffic flow restrictions delay arrivals. At IST in the last year the biggest cause was weather (98% of those minutes), then airport capacity (2%).

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