NEW DELHI: The latest Air traffic data released by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) is a shot in the arm for Hindon airport’s ambitions to enter the big league. Located just 30 km from Delhi in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, the Indian Air Force owned airfield has clocked 1, 22,381 flyers in November 2025 versus just 3,950 flyers in November 2024. This marks a 2,998% growth over its past, marking the highest improvement among all airports in the country.

Multiple reasons have contributed to this amazing turnaround, particularly for an airport which is permitted operations only from sunrise to sunset daily due to military restrictions.

Airport Director Chilaka Mahesh told this newspaper, “Initially we only had Star Air operating here which was connecting our airport to Nanded, Adampur and Keshod under the UDAAN Scheme. Air India Express and IndiGo have commenced operations here since March and July respectively this year. They connect key cities and traffic has been on the rise since then and we now have 25 departures and 25 arrivals on an average daily.”

The Airport Director said, “Public in the Delhi-NCR and Western UP clearly prefer travelling via Hindon as they do not have to commute in the traffic upto Indira Gandhi International Airport to reach other cities.”

An Air India Express spokesperson said, “Our operations from Hindon commenced on 1st March 2025. We connect to 9 direct destinations from Hindon – Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Goa, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Patna and Varanasi. We have 47 departing flights weekly.”

In a statement, IndiGo said it had 40 weekly departures from Hindon and all operations were carried out using A320 aircraft. “IndiGo has daily flights between Hindon and Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata apart from six weekly flights from Hindon to Chennai and Patna.”

Among the key developments this year was the incorporation of the SITA network for its ticketing centre. Rapido and Buzzway cab operators are functioning while Ola and Uber cabs have recently been allocated parking bays here.

Increasing the parking slots for aircraft here would help improve the patronage further, Mahesh added. “We had another round of talks with Defence authorities last week. We require 34, 500 square meters of their land to increase our parking slots to six from the present two.”

AAI began operations at this airport, built at a cost of Rs 46.6 crore, from October 11, 2019, largely to facilitate UDAAN operations.