About Jolly Grant Airport

Jolly Grant Airport, (IATA: DED, ICAO: VIDN) also known as Dehradun Airport, is a domestic airport located about 22 km (13.6 mi) southeast of Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India. Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, the airport resumed commercial operations on 30 March 2008 after a runway extension to accommodate larger aircraft.

A new terminal building was inaugurated in February 2009. Located 20 km (12.4 mi) from Rishikesh, and 30 km (18.6 mi) from Haridwar, the airport allows easy access to the region. It is approximately a 20 minutes drive to Rishikesh and 45 minutes to Haridwar and Dehradun.

Jolly Grant Airport became the center of operations for rescue effort in evacuating pilgrims from Kedarnath and the surrounding pilgrimage sites during the 2013 Uttarakhand floods. The airport, which used to handle 16 flights a day, had to handle more than 100 daily aircraft movements on some days mostly comprising Indian Air Force aircraft, Chartered flights and private jets ferrying VIPs.

The airport was constructed in 1974. Vayudoot operated scheduled services to Lucknow and Pantnagar from 1982 to 1995. Air Deccan started flights between Dehradun and New Delhi in December 2004 and added a second daily flight from August 2006.

The Airport Authority of India (AAI) suspended flight operations at the airport from 1 March, 2007 in order to execute its airport modernisation plan. The runway was extended from 3,500 feet to 7,000 feet and also broadened from 23 feet to 45 feet to enable the landing of narrow body jets like the Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320. A night landing system was installed and a new terminal building and ATC tower were also constructed.

The expansion work was expected to cost 72 crores and was to be completed by the end of 2007. However, it took a few months more and scheduled flights resumed only in March 2008 with Air Deccan re-launching its flights. Jet Airways and Air India both launched their Delhi to Dehradun services on 28 January 2010, followed by SpiceJet in 2012.

The New Domestic Terminal Building at Dehradun is a 4,200 square metre glass and steel structure having central air conditioning, central heating, Flight Information Display System (FIDS) and CCTV surveillance systems. The Terminal has peak hour passenger handling capacity of 150 passengers and annual handling capacity of 1.22 lakhs. It has 4 Check-in counters, an X-ray baggage scanner, 3 Security check booths in the departures section and 2 Baggage claim conveyor belts in the arrivals section. Its adjoining airport apron can accommodate 2 Category ‘C’ type of aircraft.

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