Kaş and Kalkan to Antalya or Dalaman Airport

02

Antalya or Dalaman: how the choice really works

If your tickets are already booked, the choice has been made for you and the only job left is to plan the right road. If they are not, resist the temptation to settle it on the map. The drive is one leg of a longer day, and the useful question is how long the whole journey takes from the villa door to your own front door, and at what hour each part of it falls. A flight from the nearer airport that leaves at an awkward time, or adds a change of plane, can cost far more than an extra half hour in the car.

Which routes each airport serves is decided by the airlines and shifts between seasons, so we cannot tell you where your flight will be; that is something to check yourself for your own dates and your own home city. What we can do is turn any departure time into a pickup time, for either airport, so that two options sit side by side before you commit. Send us both candidates and we will reply with the hour the car would need to come for each. That alone often settles it: a mid-morning flight from one airport against a dawn departure from the other makes for a very different last night.

Nothing obliges you to use the same airport in both directions, as long as your tickets allow it. Some travellers land at one and fly home from the other because the times suit them better, and since each transfer is booked and priced as its own one-way leg, it adapts to whatever combination you end up with. Whichever way you go, check the airport code printed on the ticket, not just the city: AYT is Antalya, DLM is Dalaman. A booking made for the wrong one is simple to correct in advance and very hard to put right on the morning itself.

• How long is the whole journey home from each airport, including any connection?
• What time would the car have to leave your door for each option?
• Is any difference in fare worth the difference in driving on your last day?
• Would flying in through one airport and out through the other fit your dates?
• Who in your party copes worst with a long drive, and for how long can they sit comfortably?

03

The road east to Antalya

Bound for Antalya, you leave Kaş on the D400 heading east, and the drive falls into three parts. The first runs to Demre: the road climbs above the shoreline and winds across dry, rocky, thinly settled hillsides before coming down onto a plain covered in greenhouses. Past Demre it clings to the cliffs above the sea, with tight bends, as far as Finike, and only then flattens out through the orange groves around Finike and the glasshouses of Kumluca. The second part begins beyond Kumluca, where the highway climbs inland over the mountains, passes the turnings for Adrasan and Olimpos up in the hills, and descends towards Tekirova.

The third part is the most familiar and the least predictable. From Tekirova the D400 follows the Kemer coast northwards, through its tunnels and bends, as far as Konyaaltı, and then the route has to work its way round Antalya, because the airport lies on the far, eastern side of the city. That last urban stretch is where a smooth run turns into a slow one, above all on a summer afternoon or at the start of a working day. Before dawn it hardly registers.

From Kalkan the same journey simply starts 27 km further back, along the cliffs past Kaputaş and through Kaş before turning east. There is no motorway on this coast, so most of the drive moves at the pace the bends allow, and wet winter weather slows it further. On a run of this length one short stop is part of the plan; somewhere around Finike or Kumluca, before the mountain section, is the natural place for it.

04

The road west to Dalaman

Heading west, the D400 behaves quite differently. From Kaş it follows the cliffs high above the water towards Kalkan, crossing the bridge over the Kaputaş gorge on the way, and this first half hour is among the most winding parts of the whole journey. Beyond Kalkan the road swings inland, passes the turning for Patara, and runs down into the broad, flat valley of the Eşen river near the ruins of Xanthos. It then climbs over the hills towards Fethiye, passes the town and continues past Göcek, where a tunnel carries the highway through the ridge rather than over it, before an easy final stretch across the Dalaman plain to the airport.

There is no city the size of Antalya to cross at the end, and that is the main practical difference between the two departures. On the eastern road the slowest section comes last, when you are closest to the check-in deadline; on the western road the slowest section, the corniche out of Kaş, comes first and runs at a steady, predictable pace, and the approach to the airport is quiet by comparison. The Dalaman run still has its delays, since Fethiye and Göcek are busy in high summer and farm traffic in the valley keeps its own pace, but the unknowns are smaller and the drive is shorter from either town.

If you are staying in Gelemiş, the village behind Patara beach, you are already on the Dalaman side of Kalkan and the argument for flying from there is stronger still. Both airports have more than one terminal building, so check yours on the booking confirmation a few days before the flight and include it when you send us the flight details.

05

Leave-by times, and what a pre-dawn pickup really means

Count back from take-off. Start with how long your airline wants you at the terminal, a figure to read off your own booking; for an international summer flight many travellers allow around three hours. Add the drive, then a margin of twenty to thirty minutes for the villa lane, loading the cases and one short stop. On that basis the pickup times come out roughly as follows. For a domestic flight, or out of season when queues are shorter, check the airline's own deadline before trimming anything.

Set a real flight against those figures and the consequences are plain. A nine o'clock departure from Antalya means a car at a Kaş hotel around three in the morning, and at a Kalkan villa nearer a quarter to three. The same departure time from Dalaman means a Kalkan pickup at about four and a Kaş pickup around half past three. None of these is comfortable, but the gap between a short night and almost no night at all is sometimes the strongest argument in the whole airport question.

A pickup at that hour has its own logistics. Many places to stay on this coast are small, and not every reception is staffed through the night, so pay the bill the night before and ask how the door and the gate work after midnight. Breakfast will not have started; ask the evening before whether something can be left out. On the Antalya road, the uplands after Kaş and the mountain crossing beyond Kumluca are driven in darkness for much of the year, and little along the way is open before sunrise, so carry water and whatever the children will need for the first couple of hours. Be outside with the luggage a little before the agreed time.

• Kaş to Antalya: car at the door about six hours before departure
• Kalkan to Antalya: about six hours fifteen before departure
• Kaş to Dalaman: about five hours thirty before departure
• Kalkan to Dalaman: about five hours before departure
• Domestic flight: ask when you book, as the airport needs less of your time and the car can come later

06

Hillside villas: getting the car to the right gate

Much of the accommodation around Kalkan is not a hotel at all but a villa on the slope above the bay or higher up towards Islamlar, and the Çukurbağ peninsula outside Kaş is lined with houses and small hotels along a road that loops round the headland. They suit a holiday far better than a departure in the dark. Lanes are steep and narrow, some finish in a driveway with no room for a van to turn, and a villa is often known by its name rather than a street number, which gives a driver arriving at three in the morning little to go on.

The remedy is simple and worth sorting out when you book rather than the night before. Send a map pin of the gate itself, not of the village, and tell us whether the last stretch is steep, unpaved or too tight for a larger vehicle. Where a van cannot reach the door, we agree a meeting point at the nearest place a car can stop and turn, and it helps to know beforehand how far the cases must go. If the owner or the agency has check-out arrangements, such as keys to leave in a box or a gate to lock behind you, deal with them before the pickup time, because those minutes come straight out of your margin.

• A map pin of the gate, sent with the booking or by WhatsApp
• The villa name exactly as the owner or agency uses it
• Whether the lane is steep, unpaved or too narrow for a van to turn
• How many steps lie between the front door and the nearest point a car can stop
• A phone number that will work in Turkey on the morning you leave
• Any gate code or key handover that has to happen before departure

07

The vehicle, the price and what to send us

Choose the vehicle for the people and for the luggage, counting each separately. Economy carries four people with four pieces of luggage, First Class six with six, the Standard van seven with seven, and the minibuses twelve or sixteen. A week in a villa tends to produce more than suitcases, such as snorkelling kit, a folded pushchair, a cool box or a bag of things bought at the market, and on a drive of two or three hours nobody wants luggage on their lap.

The price is fixed per vehicle for the one-way leg, agreed when you book, and it depends on the address, the airport and the vehicle rather than on the traffic you meet on the day. The difference between tiers is shown on the prices page. Anything beyond the drive itself, whether a child seat, a short stop at a viewpoint, waiting time while keys are handed back or two pickups from different addresses on one run, can be arranged when you book; tell us what you need so it is settled in advance, not raised at the kerb.

Booking goes through the site's form or WhatsApp. Send the address with a map pin, the date, the airport and flight number with the time it leaves, how many people and bags are travelling, and anything unusual about the lane. We come back with a suggested pickup time and the fixed price, and you decide the final time yourself.