Noida International Airport opens: Delhi NCR gets its second major airport

Delhi NCR now has two large commercial airports. Noida International Airport (code DXN) at Jewar, in western Uttar Pradesh, opened to passengers in mid-2026.

Key dates

• 6 March 2026: the DGCA granted the aerodrome licence
• 28 March 2026: Phase 1 was inaugurated
• 15 June 2026: commercial operations began with an IndiGo flight from Lucknow

Phase 1 at a glance

• One runway and one passenger terminal
• Capacity of 12 million passengers a year
• IndiGo as launch carrier and Akasa Air as a strategic partner, serving cities including Lucknow, Dehradun, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Mumbai

Part of a bigger airport build-out

Navi Mumbai International Airport opened to passengers at the end of 2025 and crossed one lakh passengers within 19 days. Under the Modified UDAN scheme approved in March 2026, the government plans 100 more airports from unserved airstrips and 200 helipads over the next decade. Airbus expects India to have about 200 airports by 2035.

Why new airports mean pilot jobs

New airports let airlines open routes that congested airports cannot handle. Each new route needs aircraft, and each aircraft needs several crews to cover a schedule. That is why airport capacity, fleet orders and pilot demand tend to rise together.

For students in Delhi NCR, two airports also mean more airline bases, more crew rooms and eventually more local opportunities in operations, dispatch and training.