There are three airports in Uttarakhand or Uttaranchal, including one major airport at Dehradun, the capital of the state. Another airport is located in the Kumaon region of Pantnagar and the third one is at the Chakrata Air Force Base near Dehradun.
The major airport in Uttaranchal is called the Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun and this airport is well – connected to Delhi and other important cities of India offering international connections.
The other two airports assist the main airport in serving the tourists well. The Pant Nagar Airport is located at about 11kms from Udhamsingh Nagar, whereas it is about 14 Kms away from Rudrapur and 40 Kms from Haldwani. Pant Nagar Airport allows domestic flight landings. On the other hand, the Chakrata base airport in Uttarakhand is used mainly by the air force.
Earlier the infrastructures at Jolly Grant Airport were not too advanced, which hampered the landing of big aircrafts. Only small aircrafts could be landed at this airport. But with government initiative and a major refurbishing and revamping task, this Uttaranchal airport now can easily handle large crafts.
In fact, the Jollygrant airport in Dehradun is upgraded to handle B-737/A-320 aircraft and Pantnagar airport is being upgraded for ATR-42 operations on the request of airlines.
The jolly grant airport is very close to Rishikesh and could be reached in 20-mins by taxi. The improved connectivity of this airport has offered easy connectivity for more foreign tourists to visit cities like Rishikesh, Haridwar and Dehradun. The Jolly Grant airport in Uttaranchal has a huge runway, which is approximately 7,000 ft long.
Plans are on to launch helipad service in Pant Nagar and Jolly Grant Airports and other important tourist destinations like Ghangharia and Hemkund Sahib in Uttaranchal to provide easy commutation service to the tourist in the state.
Thus, Uttarakhand Airports offers well connected flights to its national as well as international tourists and serve as one of the premier tourist states in India.