Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport
Facts on CCU
CCU stands for Calcutta, the city's official name until it became Kolkata in 2001. The airport's own name changed in 1995 and the city's in 2001, but the three letters on every bag tag never moved.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport is named for Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), who passed the vital first Indian Civil Service exam with distinction, then refused to sit the routine final one, saying nationalism was the higher calling. He became Congress president in 1938 and later led the Indian National Army.
Source: Wikipedia
The honorific Netaji, Hindustani for "Respected Leader", was first applied to Bose in Germany in early 1942 by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by officials of Berlin's Special Bureau for India. It is now used throughout India.
Source: Wikipedia
Kolkata's airport started as open ground beside the Royal Artillery Armoury at Dum Dum and opened in 1924, making it one of India's oldest. KLM began scheduled stops the same year on its Amsterdam to Batavia route.
Source: Wikipedia
In 1942 the United States Army Air Forces' 7th Bombardment Group flew B-24 Liberators from the airfield on combat missions over Burma. It also served Air Transport Command as a cargo aerial port and the Tenth Air Force as a communications centre.
Source: Wikipedia
A 119-year-old mosque stands about 30 metres off the northern end of the secondary runway, so engineers had to lengthen that runway from the southern end instead. When the main runway is working, the secondary one is used as a taxiway.
Source: Wikipedia
The integrated Terminal 2, inaugurated on 20 January 2013, spreads 233,000 square metres over six levels, with 128 check-in counters, 78 immigration counters and 18 aerobridges. The two terminals it replaced could handle five million passengers a year between them.
Source: Wikipedia
Calcutta was an early jet stop: BOAC's de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered passenger aircraft, called here on its London route, and in 1964 Indian Airlines launched India's first domestic jet service with Caravelles on the Calcutta to Delhi run.
Source: Wikipedia