Welcoming arrival passengers with pickup signs at Istanbul Airport is banned by the airport’s security commission. Turkish authorities set a €4 fee for Istanbul Airport’s “Meeting Lounge” service.
The new lounge can be used for free until the end of March, but individuals and companies will have to pay a fee for each passenger they are welcoming afterwards.
Those who do not know the person they are waiting for are required to pay a certain fee and wait for their guests at the Meeting Lounge.
Both passengers and those wishing to pick them up will notify the authorities of their names, who will make sure they meet up.
İsmail Şanlı, the regional governor of the airport said, “We will consider meeting a passenger with a banner inside the airport as backstreet agentship. With the launch of Meeting Lounge, we are eliminating the customers’ anxieties such as ‘Who is to welcome me, where?”.
