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Chandigarh International Airport (VICG), officially Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport, serves the union territory of Chandigarh and lies just across the border in Mohali, Punjab, sharing its site with an Indian Air Force station. For a visiting VFR pilot it offers a single long asphalt runway with full ILS coverage and modern approach lighting, set within a busy mixed civil-military airspace environment in northern India.
Chandigarh International Airport, named after the independence-era freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, is a joint civil-military aerodrome serving the Chandigarh metropolitan region. It is operated by Chandigarh International Airport Limited (CHIAL), a joint venture between the Airports Authority of India and the state governments of Punjab and Haryana, and it shares its runway and airspace with an Indian Air Force station. For a simulator pilot the field is notable for its single very long, ILS-equipped runway and its dual identity as both a growing international gateway and an active military installation.
The airport sits in Jhiurheri village, Mohali, in Punjab, immediately adjacent to the Chandigarh union territory boundary, and it shares its site and airspace with the Indian Air Force Station Chandigarh. The field handles both domestic services and a small number of international flights to destinations such as Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, placing it within airspace that is actively used by military traffic as well as scheduled civil operations.
The airport has a single physical runway, 11/29, of asphalt construction with lighting on both directions. The database lists a length of 8,495 ft for runway 11 and 9,076 ft for runway 29, and both ends are equipped with ILS. Field elevation is 1,017 ft.
Chandigarh Approach operates on 118.3 MHz and Chandigarh Tower on 118.6 MHz. The runway is equipped with ILS on both 11 and 29, supporting instrument approaches to the field.
The airport began life as the civil enclave of an Indian Air Force station, with Indian Airlines starting scheduled flights to Delhi in the 1970s. A new civil terminal building was opened in the enclave on 14 April 2011 and was declared a customs airport later that year, though no international flights ever used this facility. In 2008 the Punjab government acquired land south of the existing runway at Jhiurheri to build a larger terminal, which was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on 11 September 2015 and became fully operational on 19 October 2015. Following a long-running public interest litigation over the lack of international services, IndiGo and Air India Express finally began flights to Dubai and Sharjah respectively in September 2016. The single runway, 11/29, underwent a major upgrade and repair programme from 2017 that was completed on 9 April 2019, extending it and adding approach lighting; the airport moved to round-the-clock operations from 10 April 2019, and further approach lighting was added in the touchdown zone in 2021 to assist landings in fog.
Chandigarh International Airport now operates around the clock following the 2019 runway upgrade, with approach and touchdown-zone lighting installed to support operations in foggy conditions, a recurring issue in the region during winter. The airport continues to operate as a joint civil-military facility alongside the Indian Air Force station, and civil operations are handled through the terminal opened in 2015, serving a mix of domestic routes and a small number of international services to the Gulf.
