Indira Gandhi International Airport
Facts on DEL
Delhi's airport wasn't always called Indira Gandhi International: it began as Palam Airport (built on a former RAF station from 1943) and only took its current name in 1986, when a new international terminal opened; its IATA code DEL still nods to the older name, simply standing for Delhi.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport is named for Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), India's first and only female prime minister, in office from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until she was assassinated by two of her own bodyguards on 31 October 1984. Her cumulative 15 years and 350 days is second only to her father, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Source: Wikipedia
The honour came quickly. Terminal 2, built for ₹95 crore, was inaugurated in May 1986 and Palam Airport took the name Indira Gandhi International on 2 May 1986 — barely eighteen months after her assassination. The ICAO code VIDP still quietly spells out the old name, Delhi Palam.
Source: Wikipedia
DEL has been India's busiest airport by passenger traffic every year since 2009, and in the 2024-25 fiscal year it handled over 79 million passengers — the highest total in the airport's history.
Source: Wikipedia
Runway 11R/29L, opened in 2008, carries one of the world's longest paved threshold displacements at 1,460 m. The cause is a 263 m Shiv statue standing near the approach, which cuts the landing distance available on 29L to 2,970 m.
Source: Wikipedia
Delhi's winter fog is an engineering problem. After a record run of disruptions in the winter of 2005, domestic airlines trained crews to fly CAT-II approaches down to 350 m visibility, and Delhi is one of only three Indian airports — with Lucknow and Jaipur — equipped with CAT III-B ILS.
Source: Wikipedia
Terminal 3, designed by HOK in consultation with Mott MacDonald, opened on 3 July 2010 after 37 months of construction. Spread over 6.4 million square feet (about 594,579 m²), it was the world's eighth-largest passenger terminal on completion and added capacity for 34 million passengers a year.
Source: Wikipedia
The Eastern Cross Taxiways, opened with the fourth runway on 14 July 2023, are a 2.1 km pair of elevated taxiways that carry aircraft over the airport approach roads. They cut the run from the northern apron to the southern runways from nine or ten minutes to about two.
Source: Wikipedia
The first nonstop flight between India and North America left Delhi in October 2001, flown by Canada 3000 to Toronto. Russia's post-Cold War opening of its airspace made the polar routing possible. The airline collapsed one month later.
Source: Wikipedia