Turkish Cargo’s operational processes now in Smartist

While we used our freighters at the Ataturk Airport, we benefited from our passenger aircraft and the paxfre capacity at the Istanbul Airport.

Turkish Cargo recently incorporated its air cargo transportation operations in Smartist, the mega cargo facility.

Having moved to the cargo operations, Turkish Cargo is using the passenger flights to Istanbul Airport, continuing its freighter operations at Ataturk Airport. Since its infrastructure has been made entirely available, the air cargo brand moved its freighter operations to its mega cargo facility at the Istanbul Airport using a relocation operation that took 72 hours.

Talking about the start of the full-capacity operation of Smartist, Turhan Ozen, chief cargo officer, Turkish Airlines, said: “During the last three years, we carried out a highly substantial operation in both of our hubs. While we used our freighters at the Ataturk Airport, we benefited from our passenger aircraft and the paxfre capacity at the Istanbul Airport.

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 paxfre. We transported more than four million air cargo shipments, 2.5 million tonnes of which were moved from/to the Ataturk Airport and 1.8 million tonnes of which were transported from/to Istanbul Airport.”

Smartist is under-construction to serve as the biggest industrial building under a single roof at the Istanbul Airport to achieve an annual capacity of four million tonnes at an area of 340,000 square metres after all the phases are completed. The building is equipped with technologies such as augmented reality, automatic storage systems, robotic process automation and unmanned ground vehicles.