Turkey, Antalya Airport

The Airport is small and thus quick to travel through, other than that I can't say I enjoyed the airport. The only duty free shop charged me more in Turkish Lira than in Euros (about 2 euros more) and even worse the drink machines only accepted Euro coins. Understandably being English I don't carry Euros (especially not coins) to Turkey a country which uses the Turkish Lira. While I understand accepting foreign currencies to overcharge in Lira and fail to sell water in Lira is frankly ridiculous!

Also the Burger King I visited at the Terminal had run out of all drinks except Fanta, fortunately they accept Lira and cards.

Antalya is overall quite a poor airport. It looks ok on the outside but very good inside and is very modern and clean, unfortunately they're the only good points. The ease of our journey through the airport greatly deteriorated as we progressed through the airport. The airport had an average selection of shops and food/drink facillities all averagely priced.

So far it seems ok. The airport, although one of the largest in Turkey seem to appear confused or is not sure what to do when a plane arrives or departs. We were on one of those special charter flights that only operates for a couple of months. Our flight was to Birmingham and we were told to go to gate 66 and each gate was in its own litte room surrounded by glass walls. About all the passengers were at the gate when we were informed over the tannoy that the flight was going from gate 67 despite the departure boards saying 66 so at this point all 180 passengers had to move to the seperate room gate 67 was in. About three minutes after all the passengers had moved they changed it back to 66 where at this point the board now said 67 so we all had to move back to agte 66. We could see alot of other flights were also being told to move gates.

Later when they announced our boarding call through gate 66 they said many times that our flight was bound to Birmingham and London Gatwick despite everybody having a direct ticket to Birmingham. I saw one passenger ask a member of staff at the gate where it was flying to for confirmation and they responded with it will land at both airports. It was obvious everybody grew confused as to what was going on and the majority were not sure if we were landing at Gatwick on the way to Birmingham as it comes first on the route. Overall this airport caused alot of chaos and confusion to all the passengers on our flight and it appears other flights also had the same chaos we did. It had actually turned out that the fight was direct to Birmingham and then flew empty to Gatwick to pick passengers up from there to fly back to Turkey, our flight bound to the UK needed no mention of Gatwick what so ever as it just caused confusion.

Overall this airport caused alot of concern to passengers on our flight as they seem to get into a panic when a plane comes or goes. Antalya airport is one I will not like to use again, although very clean and modern, are very disorganised and can't seem to make their mind up with alot of flights which gate to send passengers to.