New Delhi, March 28 Commercial flight operations from the Noida International Airport will begin in the next 45 to 60 days, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Saturday.
The Noida International Airport (NIA), located in Jewar, Uttar Pradesh, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday.
Naidu said flight operations from the airport would begin in 45 to 60 days.
Security plans for the airport are being finalized, and IndiGo is eager to start flights from the airport, he told media persons.
Earlier in the day, billboards and cutouts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were seen along the approach road to the venue, where bhajans and songs filled the air before the formal inauguration.
People had gathered at the venue, with elaborate and segmented seating arrangements under a large tent.
Among the largest greenfield airport projects in the country, NIA, located in Jewar, Gautam Buddh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, will initially have a capacity to handle 12 million passengers per year.
Once fully developed, the airport will have a total passenger handling capacity of 70 million.
The first phase of NIA has been developed at an investment of around Rs 11,200 crore. 'DXN' is the code for the airport, which will be operated by Yamuna International Airport Pvt Ltd (YIAPL), a subsidiary of Zurich Airport International AG, under a public-private partnership.
The airport features a 3,900-meter runway capable of handling wide-body aircraft, along with modern navigation systems including Instrument Landing System (ILS) and advanced airfield lighting.
Originally scheduled to commence passenger services in September 2024, NIA is being developed in four phases, along with a dedicated cargo terminal. It received an aerodrome license from the aviation regulator DGCA earlier this month.
The peak handling capacity in the first phase will be 30 flights per hour.
In the first phase, there will be 28 aircraft stands, and the projected cargo capacity is around 2.5 lakh tonnes.
Terminal 1 of the airport spans 1,37,985 square meters with 48 check-in counters.
Over 40 acres of land have been allocated for developing MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) facilities at the airport.
NIA and Akasa Air have announced a strategic partnership for the airline to set up an MRO facility.