Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar Airport is an

international airport An international airport is an airport with customs and border control facilities enabling passengers to travel between countries around the world. International airports are usually larger than domestic airports and they must feature longer r ...

that principally serves

Indore Indore () is the largest and most populous city in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It serves as the headquarters of both Indore District and Indore Division. It is also considered as an education hub of the state and is the only city to ...

and adjacent regions in

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the second ...

. It is the busiest airport in

Central India Central India is a loosely defined geographical region of India. There is no clear official definition and various ones may be used. One common definition consists of the states of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, which are included in al ...

and is located west of Indore. According to the statistics released by the

Airports Authority of India The Airports Authority of India, or AAI, is a public sector enterprise under the ownership of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India. It is responsible for creating, upgrading, maintaining, and managing civil aviation infrastruct ...

(AAI), the agency responsible for the maintenance and management of the airport, it was the 18th busiest airport in India by passenger traffic in the year 2018-19. The airport is named after Maharani Ahilya Bai Holkar of

, belonging to the

Holkar The Holkar (Pronunciation: �o(ː)ɭkəɾ dynasty was a Maratha clan of Dhangar origin in India. The Holkars were generals under Peshwa Baji Rao I, and later became Maharajas of Indore in Central India as an independent member of the M ...

dynasty of the

Maratha Empire The Maratha Empire, also referred to as the Maratha Confederacy, was an early modern Indian confederation that came to dominate much of the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century. Maratha rule formally began in 1674 with the coronation of Sh ...

. Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar Airport was adjudged as the best airport in under 20 lakh (2 million) annual passenger footfall category in

Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Paci ...

region in the

Airports Council International Airports Council International (ACI) is an organization of airport authorities aimed at unifying industry practices for airport standards. Established in 1991, its headquarters (ACI World) are based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and its member ...

(ACI)'s airport service quality (ASQ) rankings for the year 2017. The World Book of Records, UK bestowed Worlds Standardisation Certification to Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar Airport for the achievement of ACI Award 2017 on 9 April 2018. Since 24 March 2018, it has started operations 24*7 with night landing facilities. The city will get India's largest Greenfield airport near

Chapda Chapda is a town in the Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh state in India. Chapada is around from Indore. Demographics The Chapada village has a population of 6624. In 2011, the literacy rate of Chapada village was 73.20% compared to 69.32% in ...

Town About from

. The Airport has been given approval by Ministry of India.

History

The

Holkar State Indore State, also known as Holkar State, was a kingdom in India. Its rulers belonged to the Holkar dynasty. After 1857, Indore became a 19-gun salute Maratha princely state (a rare high rank) under the British Raj. Indore state wa ...

Administration, after consulting Nevill Vintcent of Messrs Tata and Sons (Aviation Department), selected the Bijasan site for the construction of the airport in 1935. Air services from Indore to

Gwalior Gwalior() is a major city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; it lies in northern part of Madhya Pradesh and is one of the Counter-magnet cities. Located south of Delhi, the capital city of India, from Agra and from Bhopal, the s ...

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

and

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

began in July 1948. The airport was handed over to the

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

in April 1950 under the Central Financial Integration Scheme. A new runway measuring 5,600 feet in length was completed by March 1966 at a cost of ₹15 lakh to accommodate larger aircraft. Night landing facilities were also provided. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has given its approval to the airport for operating international flights making it the first airport in Madhya Pradesh to do so.

Structure

Indore Airport measures {{cvt, 729, acres and the current terminal building is spread over {{cvt, 18,000, m2. The main apron has space for one- B737, four- B737/

A321 The Airbus A321 is a member of the Airbus A320 family of short to medium range, narrow-body, commercial passenger twin engine jet airliners; it carries 185 to 236 passengers. It has a stretched fuselage which was the first derivative of the ba ...

, four- ATR72 and one-

Q400 The De Havilland Canada DHC-8, commonly known as the Dash 8, is a series of turboprop-powered regional airliners, introduced by de Havilland Canada (DHC) in 1984. DHC was later bought by Boeing in 1988, then by Bombardier in 1992; then by ...

aircraft simultaneously. MPFC Flying Club is at the south end of the runway; its apron has space for four- C172 aircraft simultaneously. Indore's sole runway 07/25 is 2,750 metres long and 45 metres wide. The airfield is equipped with night landing facilities and a CAT-1

Instrument Landing System In aviation, the instrument landing system (ILS) is a precision radio navigation system that provides short-range guidance to aircraft to allow them to approach a runway at night or in bad weather. In its original form, it allows an aircraft to ...

(ILS) (on Runway 25 only) as well as navigational facilities like

DVOR Very high frequency omnirange station (VOR) is a type of short-range radio navigation system for aircraft, enabling aircraft with a receiving unit to determine its position and stay on course by receiving radio signals transmitted by a network ...

/DME and an NDB. The runway is being extended as a part of the expansion plan for the airport.

Terminals

Terminal building view from ATC complex at Indore Airport

Indore's new expandable integrated terminal building was inaugurated on 14 February 2012. It was built by AAI at a cost of {{INRConvert, 135, c, 0 and is capable of handling 700 passengers per hour. The new terminal has modern escalators and a high-tech

baggage handling system A baggage handling system (BHS) is a type of conveyor system installed in airports that transports checked luggage from ticket counters to areas where the bags can be loaded onto airplanes. A BHS also transports checked baggage coming from airplan ...

. It caters to the movement of 96 flights every day. In preparation towards the proposed international operations, it will have 16 check-in counters, 16 immigration counters (four for departure and 12 for arrivals) and four counters for customs, apart from 569 CCTVs and X-ray machines for security. There are three aerobridges serving the airport. The terminal has one lift and one escalator conveyor belt for baggage. As per the international standards, it has two ATMs (01 SBI and 01 Union Bank of India), shopping stalls and a food court. The airport is under an expansion stage. A new terminal adjoining the current terminal, along with an airport hotel and a convention center, are planned at the airport site. The completion of the expansion will turn the

customs airport An international airport is an airport with customs and border control facilities enabling passengers to travel between countries around the world. International airports are usually larger than domestic airports and they must feature longer r ...

into a fully-fledged international one.

Airlines and destinations

{{Airport-dest-list ,

Air India Air India is the flag carrier airline of India, headquartered at New Delhi. It is owned by Talace Private Limited, a Special-Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of Tata Sons, after Air India Limited's former owner, the Government of India, completed the ...

, Dubai–International,

, {{nowrap, Alliance Air , Bilaspur,

Jabalpur Jabalpur is a city situated on the banks of Narmada River in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. According to the 2011 census, it is the third-largest urban agglomeration in Madhya Pradesh and the country's 38th-largest urban agglomeration. ...

IndiGo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', ...

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ; Gujarati: Amdavad ) is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 (per ...

Allahabad Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the administra ...

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which al ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, Goa–Dabolim,

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern Indi ...

Jaipur Jaipur (; Hindi: ''Jayapura''), formerly Jeypore, is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. , the city had a population of 3.1 million, making it the tenth most populous city in the country. Jaipur is also known a ...

Jodhpur Jodhpur (; ) is the second-largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan and officially the second metropolitan city of the state. It was formerly the seat of the princely state of Jodhpur State. Jodhpur was historically the capital of the ...

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and divis ...

Nagpur Nagpur (pronunciation: aːɡpuːɾ is the third largest city and the winter capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the 13th largest city in India by population and according to an Oxford's Economics report, Nagpur is projected to ...

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

Raipur Raipur ( ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Raipur is also the administrative headquarters of Raipur district and Raipur division, and the largest city of the state. It was a part of Madhya Pradesh before the state of Ch ...

, Star Air ,

Ajmer Ajmer is one of the major and oldest cities in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the centre of the eponymous Ajmer District. It is located at the centre of Rajasthan. It is also known as heart of Rajasthan. The city was established as "' ...

Belgaum Belgaum ( ISO: ''Bēḷagāma''; also Belgaon and officially known as Belagavi) is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka located in its northern part along the Western Ghats. It is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous Belagavi ...

, Vistara,

{{cite web, url=https://www.airvistara.com/in/en/flightschedule, title=Vistara Flight Schedules, publisher= Vistara, access-date=30 December 2021

Statistics

{{Airport-Statistics, iata=IDR

References

{{reflist

External links

Indore Airport - AAI website
{{Portalbar, India, Aviation {{Airports in India {{Neighbourhoods of Indore Buildings and structures in Indore Transport in Indore Airports in Madhya Pradesh Airports established in 1948 1948 establishments in India