Turkish Cargo announced that it has moved its freighter operations from Ataturk Airport to Istanbul Airport — finally joining its passenger flights from the hub after operating on both airports for more than two years.

In a statement, Turkish said Istanbul Airport handled its first flight in 2018 and the carrier moved its passenger services to the hub in 2019.

Meanwhile, freighter flights remained at Ataturk Airport — which has hosted Turkish Airlines for 89 years — while operations were established at the new hub. 

But Turkish said since its infrastructure has been made available entirely, the air cargo carrier also moved its freighter operations to its Mega Cargo Facility at the Istanbul Airport by means of a relocation operation that took 72 hours and a total of  4,125 pieces of equipment of 80 different types that needed to be transferred to Istanbul Airport as part of the move.

"Having said goodbye to the Ataturk Airport by such a massive relocation, Turkish Cargo will from now on carry out all of its operational processes as based in SMARTIST, the new hub for the air cargo logistics," it said.

The SMARTIST hub will eventually have an annual capacity of 4 million tonnes and measure 340,000 sq m.

The said facility is also equipped with augmented reality, automatic storage systems, robotic process automation and unmanned ground vehicles.

"During the last three years, we carried out a substantial operation in both of our hubs. While we made use of our freighters at the Ataturk Airport, we benefited from our passenger aircraft and the pax-freighters capacity at the Istanbul Airport," said Turhan Ozen, chief cargo officer at Turkish Airlines.

"We performed approximately 30,000 flights, 23,000 of which were performed by making use of our freighters and 6,000 of which were by pax-fighters, and we transported more than 4 million air cargo shipments, 2.5 million tons of which were transported from/to the Ataturk Airport and 1.8 million tons of which were transported from/to the Istanbul Airport," Ozen added.

The last Turkish Airlines flight out of Ataturk Airport flew to Khartoum, Sudan operated by an A330 freighter.