ESB Ankara

How deep the ESB board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from ESB. This reads the same 85 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 62of the 85 destinations are flown by one airline
• 40destinations run less than once a day
• 7destinations have four or more departures a day
• 71.8%of the destinations name AJet, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at ESB

18 airlines appear on the ESB board and they do not hold it evenly. AJet is on 61 of the 85 destinations, 71.8 per cent of them, and on 42 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 151.2 of the 178.3 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is Pegasus on 28 destinations. 13 of the 18 airlines at ESB appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 61 of the 85 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on an ESB sector is usually another AJet aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. That is why the alternate airports listed above matter more at ESB than the destination count does.

How much of the ESB board is daily

Of the 85 destinations, 45 are flown at least once a day and 40 are not, 4 of them running once a week or less. The median destination on the ESB board is flown about once a day.

An average of 0.14 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: ESB to Rotterdam (RTM) is about one a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 70 of the 178.3 departures a day, 39.3 per cent of the whole board. The other 80 destinations are spread widely enough that a courier who misses the first departure at ESB usually has somewhere else to look on the same board.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Bâle/Mulhouse BSL	France	Pegasus	1	2,191	plan this
Copenhagen CPH	Denmark	Pegasus	1	2,278	plan this
Kabul KBL	Afghanistan	Ariana Afghan Airlines	1	3,238	plan this
Rotterdam RTM	the Netherlands	Sun Express	1	2,542	plan this
Brussels BRU	Belgium	Sun Express	2	2,502	plan this
Dubai DXB	the United Arab Emirates	Pegasus	2	2,654	the pair page
Hanover HAJ	Germany	Sun Express	2	2,239	the pair page
Kraków KRK	Poland	Pegasus	2	1,512	plan this
Paris ORY	France	Transavia France	2	2,592	plan this
Podgorica TGD	Montenegro	Pegasus	2	1,174	plan this

The ten destinations out of ESB where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable. 25 further destinations sit in the same position and are listed in the board above.

The way back from ESB

The desk holds the return direction for 53 of the 85 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On two of them the return into ESB runs thinner than the outbound by more than a quarter. The widest gaps are Baghdad (BGW) at 0.71 out a day against 0.29 back and Geneva (GVA) at 0.43 out a day against 0.29 back.

It runs the other way as well: Dubai (DXB) files 0.43 a day back into ESB against 0.29 outbound, which is the shape that strands a courier at this end rather than at the far end.

The clock at ESB

ESB keeps Europe/Istanbul time, an hour behind Dubai all year.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 08:00 at ESB, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for eight hours. That is wide enough to settle a customs question at ESB and still make a departure the same day.

The night at ESB

14 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into Düsseldorf (DUS) the door shuts at 22:00 local, so the last departure from ESB that lands inside it leaves around 19:29, on a modelled block of 3h 31m. Into Vienna (VIE) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from ESB that lands inside it leaves around 21:59, on a modelled block of 2h 31m. Into Frankfurt-am-Main (FRA) the door shuts at 23:00 local, so the last departure from ESB that lands inside it leaves around 20:42, on a modelled block of 3h 18m. Those three departure times out of ESB are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where ESB turns up on the rest of this site

ESB carries two other pages on this site as well: the Türkiye country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport and the ESB transit page for the connecting case, where a courier changes aircraft here rather than starting or finishing.

The site publishes 11 airport pair pages that start or end at ESB, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Ankara to Istanbul (SAW), Ankara to İzmir (ADB) and Ankara to Baku (GYD).

One courier posting names ESB as the airport a courier here flies from: Ankara.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with ESB already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 85 destinations above.