Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport , also known as Guwahati International Airport and formerly as 'Borjhar 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 ...

serving

Guwahati Guwahati (, ; formerly rendered Gauhati, ) is the biggest city of the Indian state of Assam and also the largest metropolis in northeastern India. Dispur, the capital of Assam, is in the circuit city region located within Guwahati and is the ...

, the largest city of

North-East India , native_name_lang = mni , settlement_type = , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , motto = , image_map = Northeast india.png , ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, and is also the primary airport of North-East India. It is the 12th busiest airport in India. It is located at

Borjhar Borjhar is a locality in Guwahati, situated on the western fringes of the metropolitan expanse of the city. Jalukbari is 12 km to the east with nearest Railway station and junction at Azara and Kamakhya respectively. Transport Lokpriya Gopinath ...

, 26 km (16 mi) from

Dispur Dispur (, ) is the capital of the Indian state of Assam and is a suburb at Guwahati. It became the capital in 1973, when Shillong the erstwhile capital, became the capital of the state of Meghalaya that was carved out of Assam. Dispur is the ...

, the capital city of Assam and 28 km (18 mi) from Guwahati, and is named after

Gopinath Bordoloi Gopinath Bordoloi (6 June 1890 – 5 August 1950) was a politician and Indian independence activist who served as the first Chief Minister of Assam. He was a follower of the Gandhian principle of non-violence as a political tool. Due to his un ...

, a freedom fighter and the first

Chief Minister of Assam The chief minister of Assam, an Indian state, is the head of the Government of Assam. As per the Constitution of India, the governor is the state's ''de jure'' head, but ''de facto'' executive authority rests with the chief minister. Following e ...

after India's independence. The airport is managed by

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 ...

and also serves as an

Indian Air Force The Indian Air Force (IAF) is the air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its complement of personnel and aircraft assets ranks third amongst the air forces of the world. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial w ...

base.

History

The airport has undergone numerous expansions and renovations since its establishment in 1958. It handled more than 3.7 million passengers in 2017, an increase of 36% from 2016. The LGB Airport has witnessed annual traffic of over 23% in 2018–19 with a total footfall of 5.7 million passengers and 55,066 aircraft movements in the same period. The existing terminal building at the airport has a maximum handling capacity of 850 arrival/departure passengers an hour. In 2002, the first international flight operated by Air India from Guwahati to Bangkok, using an

Airbus A310 The Airbus A310 is a wide-body aircraft, designed and manufactured by Airbus Industrie, then a consortium of European aerospace manufacturers. Airbus had identified a demand for an aircraft smaller than the A300, the first twin-jet wide-bod ...

aircraft, becoming the first international airport in the North-East region. However, the flight was withdrawn due to poor passenger load. In January 2019, Guwahati won bids for two international destinations under the

UDAN ''Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik'' (Hindi for "Let the common citizens of the country fly"), known by its acronym ''UDAN'' (Hindi for "flight") is a regional airport development program of the Government of India and part of the Regional Connectivi ...

scheme, destinations being most anticipated

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city ...

and Bangkok-Don Mueang. In November 2021, Guwahati won bids for six international destinations under the UDAN scheme – Dhaka, Bangkok–Don Mueang,

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = '' Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , su ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

. In February 2019, the airport has been given on lease for 50 years to

Adani Group Adani Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate, headquartered in Ahmedabad. It was founded by Gautam Adani in 1988 as a commodity trading business, with the flagship company Adani Enterprises. The Group's diverse businesses include po ...

at highest bid of Rs. 160 per passenger. Currently, international flights in the airport are operated by

Drukair Drukair Corporation Limited ( dz, འབྲུག་མཁའ་འགྲུལ་ལས་འཛིན།), operating as Drukair — Royal Bhutan Airlines, is the flag carrier of the Kingdom of Bhutan, headquartered in the western dzongkh ...

from Paro to

, as a connecting flight.

New terminal

To meet the growing demands and rising traffic in the future, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has undertaken constructing a new second passenger terminal in the northern side of the airport, at a cost of ₹ 1,232 crores. The new terminal building will be capable to handle 4,300 domestic and 200 international passengers during peak hours and about 10 million passengers annually. It will be equipped with 64 check-in counters, 20 self-check in kiosks, six baggage counters, in-line baggage security screening systems and 10

aerobridges A jet bridge (also termed jetway, jetwalk, airgate, gangway, aerobridge/airbridge, skybridge, finger, airtube, expedited suspended passenger entry system (E-SPES), or its official industry name passenger boarding bridge (PBB)) is an enclosed, m ...

. It will be an energy-efficient building, as it is expected to achieve a Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) 4-Star rating, with a solar roofing system for electricity generation, in addition to allowing maximum sunlight into the building. A photovoltaic solar plant with a power generation capacity of 540kW will be developed at the terminal, along with eco-friendly measures such as a solid waste management system, wastewater treatment facility, rainwater storage facility and underground drainage system. With an area of 1,02,500 sq.m., the terminal will have two levels, consisting of the arrivals area at the lower level and departures area at the upper level. In addition to these two primary floors, there will be two more floors; a

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian language, Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft ...

surface between the two levels, which will act as the boarding area of the terminal, and the other part will act as a service floor for the baggage handling system. The design of the terminal building is inspired by

Icarus In Greek mythology, Icarus (; grc, Ἴκαρος, Íkaros, ) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, King Minos suspe ...

, the Greek mythological figure who was one of the earliest inspirations of

human flight The history of aviation extends for more than two thousand years, from the earliest forms of aviation such as kites and attempts at tower jumping to supersonic and hypersonic flight by powered, heavier-than-air jets. Kite flying in China ...

. The airport's roof and the facade will be using the design of

Origami ) is the Japanese paper art, art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of pape ...

. As of 2021, more than 38% of the project work is completed and the new terminal building is scheduled to be ready by June 2022. However, due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, which resulted in several delays in work due to lack of labour and restrictions, the terminal is now expected to be completed by the end of 2023 or in the first quarter of 2024.

Statistics

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

Cargo

References

External links

Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport
at

website.
Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport
Official website. * {{Indian Air Force Transport in Guwahati Airports in Assam Indian Air Force bases 1958 establishments in Assam Airports established in 1958