Sonari Airport

Sonari Airport (IATA: IXW, ICAO: VEJS) is a public airport located in Jamshedpur, in the state of Jharkhand, India. The airport has unscheduled chartered flights from Kolkata.

The Aerodrome, which is spread over 25 acres, first opened in 1940. There are no scheduled flights into this Airport, however in the past years, the Airport was served by airlines like Air Deccan, Kingfisher Airlines, MDLR Airlines and Deccan Charters that discontinued services due to various reasons despite recording good loads.

While MDLR and Deccan Charters ceased operations due to internal issues, Air Deccan and Kingfisher had to discontinue services in November 2009 after load restrictions were imposed due to the short length of the runway.

Since Air Deccan and Kingfisher operated larger ATR 42 and ATR 72 aircraft respectively, operations became unviable. Tata Steel has proposed a new airport for city of Jamshedpur on 600 acres in the Adityapur-Seraikela area. The airport is to have a 7,000 feet long runway and will be able to handle Airbus A320 flights. This is impossible for current Sonari Airport.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the Jharkhand government on 20 February 2012 for establishing a new airport for Jamshedpur. The state government will provide land to AAI for developing the airport that will initially support ATR-72 sized aircraft with options for later expansion when air traffic increases.

Since Kingfisher operated larger ATR 42 and ATR 72 aircraft respectively, operations became unviable. Scheduled flights were supposed to begin in 2018 under the government's UDAN scheme, however this did not take place.

folder_open  Airports in Jharkhand