Airport
Antalya Airport (AYT)
Antalya is a holiday airport in the purest sense: a Mediterranean coastline behind it, charter and low-cost fleets in front of it, and an arrivals hall built for people who will be on a coach within the hour. It swings hard with the season, from a quiet winter timetable to a summer of near-continuous landings. Two things settle the arrival — which of its buildings your flight uses, and how you are covering the coast to Antalya or beyond.
Updated 2026-09-22
- CodesAYT · LTAI
- Passengers per year (2022)31,108,181
- Elevation54 m
- ServesAntalya
- Official websiteantalya-airport.aero
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Three buildings, and the one your ticket chose
Antalya divides its traffic between separate terminals rather than separate piers: two international buildings and a domestic one, each a self-contained operation with its own kerb, security hall and gates. Which international terminal you get is decided by the airline and, on a package holiday, by the tour operator that chartered the aircraft — not by the country you are flying in from.
That makes the terminal code printed on your boarding pass the one detail to check twice, above all on the way home, when a taxi or a transfer coach delivers you precisely where it was told. A shuttle joins the buildings, but it is a drive rather than a stroll, and discovering the mistake at the wrong kerb spends exactly the margin you set aside for the queue.
Into town: tram, shuttle, rank
A light-rail line serves the airport from its own station and runs into the centre past the exhibition grounds and the coach terminal, which makes it both the cheapest way in and the easiest to pay for with the local tap card. It is a city tram, not an airport express, so it calls everywhere along the way and suits travellers carrying little.
The airport shuttle coach is the alternative, working between the terminals and the centre on a timetable tied to the arrival banks. Taxis queue at the rank outside each building, metered rather than flat-rated, and they make sense for the sprawling hotel strips east and west of the city where neither tram nor shuttle goes.
The resort transfer, and the coast it covers
Most people leaving this airport never look at a public timetable. Package arrivals are collected by representatives holding operator boards and loaded onto coaches that work their way along the shore hotel by hotel, which is why a transfer to a resort not far beyond the airport can consume an afternoon. A private transfer booked in advance buys the direct version of the same drive.
The coastal geography is what makes the difference. The resorts spread a long way east towards Side and Alanya and west towards Kemer, and the airport sits between them rather than beside any of them. A hotel address in a brochure tells you nothing useful about the drive; the name of the district tells you everything.
High season, and how the day runs
In summer this airport works in banks. Charter and low-cost flights arrive in dense clusters, so the passport hall is either empty or a wall of people depending entirely on where your landing slot falls, and the same clusters govern the departure halls each morning. What your passport must carry, and whether anything needs arranging in advance, is set out in the entry rules for Türkiye.
Going home is where the season bites hardest. Check-in queues at the international terminals in peak weeks are the longest thing in the building, and the hotel transfer that collected you will set its pick-up accordingly — accept its timing rather than negotiating it. Anything still on the shopping list is better bought before that queue than after it.
Onward: ruins, mountains and a hire car
A car collected here opens the region properly. The Roman cities of the plain, the mountain roads climbing behind the coast and the long drive inland towards the white terraces of Pamukkale all start at the airport's own motorway junction, and the roads are good. The desks sit in arrivals with the cars in the adjacent car parks.
Without a car, the coach terminal on the tram line is the key to everything else: the intercity coach network reaches every town along the shore and deep into the interior, which is how independent travellers thread this airport into a longer route through the country. Domestic flights, by contrast, mostly route back through Istanbul rather than crossing to the other coasts.
Practical: heat, data, cash
The practical list here is a coastal one. Midsummer heat starts at the aircraft door, so water, shade and a hat belong in the hand luggage rather than the suitcase, and the same judgement that governs a beach day governs the drive out — the wider picture sits in the guide to staying healthy and safe.
Data is worth more on this coast than in the cities, because the moments that need it happen on the road: finding an unlit hotel gate on a coastal highway, or checking a ruin's opening hours from its car park. Resort life runs on cards, but the markets and the shared minibuses do not, so draw a little cash in arrivals — money in Türkiye covers the rest.