World's largest display model collection - feature report

[Henry Tenby]

"A Man of Many Models"
written by Henry Tenby (Dec 25, 2011)

I recently returned from Istanbul where I had the pleasure to visit my good friend Gokhan Sarigol, who I believe has the largest collection of airline display models in the world.

Gokhan has been collecting airline models for nearly 20 years and his amazing collection now numbers over 4,000 models. His collection is sourced from airlines and fellow collectors the world over, and the collection is housed in numerous offices and buildings in Florya on the perimeter of Istanbul's Ataturk International airport.

As President and founder of Fly Service Turkey Ltd., a ground handling and aviation services company with operations throughout Turkey as well as other international airports, Gokhan has been fortunate having made many contacts with airline executives, specially those in the Middle East and former eastern block CIS countries. As such, Gokhan's collection includes many really beautiful models of Russian airliners, coming from CIS airlines and Russian aircraft manufacturers.

As Gokhan leads me up a staircase to start the tour of his incredible collection, he says "come fly with me" .. which is really an amazing understatement which you realize the moment you step into the first large room on the second floor of his offices. This room is loaded with hundreds of models, like no other museum on the planet (that I am aware of). Large floor models rest in the corners, and a centre multi-leveled table houses a massive cluster of 747 models, while large floor models hang from the ceiling and a hallway leads to a maze of other rooms all equally loaded the most amazing models you have ever seen!!

Surely it is only a matter of time before the Guiness Book of Records comes calling to officially pronounce the collection as the world's largest. Sure, there are museum collections that are extensive and impressive. But there can be no museum that boasts over 4,000 professional travel agency models.

Many of the models are custom models made specially for Gokhan by Illyushin, Antonov and Tupolev and their respective in-house model making workshops. And many of the models were made by current day Westway Models of the UK. Outside of Pacmin's offices in Los Angeles, there cannot be too many larger collections of superb Pacmin models than Gokhan's. His collection of special commissioned Pacmins for the Japanese domestic market is unbelievable. When you add in all the floor models, cutaways, the various theme walls (the Fokker wall, Canadian wall, CP Air wall, ANA wall, Boeing 757/767 wall etc), and all the classic 1950s display models .. it all ads up to the most amazing display model collection I have every seen .. and will likely ever see!!

Thank you Gokhan for sharing the photos of your amazing collection here for fellow collectors to enjoy:
http://www.AircraftDisplayModels.com/airline-photos/photographer/811/Gokhan-Sarigol/

Below are some sample photos of Gokhan's display model collection.