Delhi NCR's second airport may finally be ready to take off. The Hindon Air Force Base will now partly serve as Ghaziabad airport. The passenger terminal for this was inaugurated by PM Narendra Modi earlier this month, though the final touches are still being added. The Financial Express reports that flights from Ghaziabad airport will likely start by end of April.
Flights from Ghaziabad airport
The Ghaziabad airport at Hindon will be much smaller in capacity and operations than Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, 40km away. The terminal itself has a capacity for about 300 passengers--that's barely one aircraft full of passengers at a time--who will be funnelled through 8 check-in counters, four frisking booths.
But it will serve to connect the NCR with other regional airports across the country. Under the UDAN scheme, airlines such as IndiGo Heritage Aviation, Ghodawat Airlines and Turbo Airlines will operate flights to Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), Pithoragarh (Uttarakhand), Nashik (Maharashtra), Faizabad (Uttar Pradesh), Hubli (Karnataka), Kannur (Kerala) and Jamnagar (Gujarat).