DiamondEcho wrote: Only in Turkey could they even fleetingly imagine they could hard-close/switch/hard-open mega airports overnight rather than a soft-launch and phased migration
The two airports are on opposite sides of the city and it is notorious difficult to get across Istanbul. So landing at one airport and taking off from the other would be difficult. Or at least it would be on Turkish Airlines and the new airport is really a vehicle to try and turn Turkish Airlines into Emirates, with a huge interchange happening every night. And it does have a perfect location between Europe, Asia and Africa.
So I think the foreign airlines could all move to the new airport without too much problem. But Turkish Airlines would be a mess if the move were phased, as connections won't work and their planes will often be in the wrong place. I'd guess they'd be shuttling planes between the two airports 24 hours a day.
I had actually been thinking of going to Dalaman next month but cancelled my plans because I don't want to connect in Istanbul, nor do I want to take EasyJet from Luton!