Puducherry Airport is a regional airport located at Lawspet in

Puducherry Puducherry or Pondicherry may refer to: * Puducherry (union territory), a union territory of India ** Pondicherry, capital of the union territory of Puducherry ** Puducherry district, a district of the union territory of Puducherry ** Puducherry t ...

, a Union territory of

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 ...

. It is situated 8.1 km from the international community of

Auroville Auroville (; City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district, mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, with some parts in the Union Territory of Pondicherry in India. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as "the ...

. The airport has scheduled flights and operations of the local flying training school. In 2007, the

Government of Puducherry Government of Puducherry is the union territorial government for the union territory of Puducherry, India. It is headed by the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry. Its capital is located at Pondicherry. Government and administration Lieuten ...

decided to expand the airport to accommodate larger aircraft and commissioned a new terminal building. The new terminal was inaugurated on 18 January 2013, with the arrival of a

SpiceJet SpiceJet is an Indian budget airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana. It is the second largest airline in the country by number of domestic passengers carried, with a market share of 13.6% as of March 2019. The airline operates 630 daily fl ...

flight from Bengaluru. After a gap of three years, the airport was operationalised again 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 Connect ...

scheme in August 2017, with a daily flight to

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 India ...

History

The airport was constructed in 1989. Between that year and 1991, regional airline

Vayudoot Vayudoot ( hi, वायुदूत, Vāyudūt, messenger who rides on the wind) was a regional airline in India established on 20 January 1981 as a joint-venture between the two state-owned carriers, Indian Airlines and Air India. The airline ...

flew to Madras,

Neyveli Neyveli is a industrial town in the Cuddalore district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located inland from the Bay of Bengal, west of Pondicherry and south of Chennai. The town was developed in 1956 after the establishment of Ney ...

and

Bangalore Bangalore (), List of renamed places in India, officially Bengaluru (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan area, metropolitan population of a ...

, however the flights were not successful and all were ended. The airport remained in disuse for the following two decades.SpiceJet announces Pondy flight schedule
The New Indian Express. 3 January 2013. Retrieved 7 December 2015. In June 2007, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between the local government and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for expansion of the airport. For the first phase, 19.92 hectares of land were acquired at 18.95 crore. Then the new terminal was constructed and the runway extended by 260 m (853 ft), allowing for the landing of

ATR ATR may refer to: Medicine * Acute transfusion reaction * Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related, a protein involved in DNA damage repair Science and mathematics * Advanced Test Reactor, nuclear research reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, ...

aircraft. This phase was completed in late 2012. The second phase of expansion involves acquiring 200 more acres of land to extend the runway by an additional 1,100 m (3,609 ft), allowing larger jet aircraft to land at the airport. The new terminal was inaugurated with the arrival of a

Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft on 17 January 2013 from

. However, this daily service lasted for only a little over one year as the airline withdrew the flight citing low number of passengers. The following year, the airport once again was brought back into operation when Alliance Air commenced flights from Bangalore on 14 April 2015, subsidised by the Pondicherry Government. These flights were suspended six months later due to "payment issues". In October 2016, the Pondicherry government signed a Tripartite MoU with the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and AAI in New Delhi to operationalise the airport under the Regional Connectivity Scheme. Subsequently, SpiceJet was awarded the Hyderabad-Pondicherry route under the scheme in March 2017 and the airline commenced operations from 16 August 2017. SpiceJet later resumed its flight to Bangalore from Pondicherry in February 2018.

Structure

Puducherry Airport has one asphalt runway, oriented 07/25, 1500 m long and 30 m wide. It has a 100 by 150 m

apron An apron is a garment that is worn over other clothing to cover the front of the body. The word comes from old French ''napron'' meaning a small piece of cloth, however over time "a napron" became "an apron", through a linguistics process cal ...

and its new terminal building can handle 300 passengers during peak hours. Navigational aids at Puducherry include an Aerodrome beacon. Currently land is being acquired to extend the runway and accommodate larger aircraft to increase flight services and open the airport for international flights.

Airlines and destinations

References

External links

* *
Pondicherry Airport
at the Airports Authority of India {{coord, 11, 58, 00, N, 79, 48, 52, E, type:airport_region:IN, display=title Airports in Puducherry Transport in Puducherry Buildings and structures in Puducherry 1989 establishments in Pondicherry Airports established in 1989