This Day, That Year – March 23

This day in history we feature the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. An international airport that serves Hyderabad, the capital of the Indian state of Telangana was opened on this day in 2008.

Trivia – Rajiv Gandhi International Airport

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport is located in Shamshabad, about 24 kilometres south of Hyderabad and it was opened on 23 March 2008 to replace Begumpet Airport, which was the sole civilian airport serving Hyderabad. It is named after Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India. Built over an area of 5,500 acres, it is the largest airport of India by area. It is owned and operated by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited, a public–private consortium. It has also ranked in AirHelp’s list of top 10 airports in the world. The fourth busiest airport in India by passengers traffic, it handled over 12 million passengers and over 140,000 tonnes of cargo between both April 2021 and March 2022.

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Rajiv Gandhi International Airport is India’s first greenfield airport built under a public-private partnership model. The airport has an integrated passenger terminal, a cargo terminal and two runways. There are also aviation training facilities, a fuel farm, a solar power plant and two maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) facilities. The airport serves as a hub for Alliance Air (India), Blue Dart Aviation, SpiceJet and IndiGo. It is a focus city for Air India. In September 2011, SpiceJet launched its regional hub at RGIA, using its new Bombardier Q400 aircraft. The airline, which chose Hyderabad due to its central location in the country, flies to several Tier-II and Tier-III cities from the airport. Regional airline TruJet too opened a hub at RGIA upon commencing operations in July 2015. In November 2014, the Ministry of Civil Aviation resolved that the domestic terminal of RGIA would be named after N. T. Rama Rao, resulting in protests from members of the Rajya Sabha. Airport officials remained unsure as to how the naming would occur.

Source – Wikipedia