Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will attend the opening of Istanbul’s gigantic $12bn international airport today.
It is intended to become one of the world’s biggest and most modern, handling up to 90m passengers per year, according to Turkish officials.
There is just one hiccup.
It is not ready.
Construction, which began three years ago, has moved ahead at literally breakneck speed.
The government acknowledges at least 27 workers have died on the site; one trade union puts the number at more than 100.
Despite the rush to meet the October 29th deadline, the anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish Republic, work is still going on.
For now, the airport will be able to serve three local and two international destinations.
The transfer of all operations from the city’s current main airport, Ataturk, to the (still unnamed) new one has been postponed to the end of December—that is, barring any further delays.
- Turkey 土耳其
- opening 开幕式；落成典礼
- Istanbul【城】伊斯坦布尔,土耳其欧洲部分之东部一城市
- gigantic 巨大的；庞大的
- up to 高达...
- hiccup 小问题；暂时性耽搁
- construction 施工；建筑；建立；建造
- acknowledge 政府承认
- barring 除非；除了
delay / postpone 都有“延迟、延期”的意思, 不同的点在于，“delay”带有不可控因素，而且略有“不情愿”的感觉，而“postpone”则是主动去推迟
- Ataturk 前总统的名字,现在用于主机场名字
不定期更新Espresso Economist上面的文章