An Overview

There are 449 airports / airstrips in the country, out of which 92 airports and 28 civil enclaves at defence airfields provide air traffic services over the entire Indian airspace and adjoining oceanic areas. However Airlines currently utilize only 61 of these Airports.

The Airports in India are presently classified in the following manner:

1. International Airports: The airports at Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi, Chennai (Madras), Kolkata (Calcutta), Kochi (Cochin) and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) are declared as international airports and are available for scheduled international operations by Indian and foreign carriers.

2. Custom Airports: Custom Airports have customs and immigration facilities for limited international operations by national carriers and for foreign tourist and cargo charter flights. These include the airports at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Calicut, Cochin, Goa, Varanasi, Patna, Agra, Jaipur, Amritsar and Tiruchirapally.

3. Model Airports: Model Airports are domestic airports which have a minimum runway length of 7500 feet and adequate terminal capacity to handle Airbus 320 type of aircraft and can cater to limited international traffic, if required. These include the airports at Lucknow, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati, Nagpur, Vadodara, Coimbatore, Imphal and Indore.

4. Other Domestic Airports: All other airports are covered in this category.

5. Civil Enclaves in Defence Airport: There are 28 civil enclaves in Defence airfields.