Gondia Airport

Gondia Airport, also known as Birsi Airport, is a domestic airport serving the city of Gondia in Maharashtra, India. It is located at Zilmili near Birsi village, 17 km north-east of the city centre. It is also home to the National Flying Training Institute (NFTI), where purposes of general aviation and pilot training are conducted.

Other nearby airports to Gondia Airport (GDB) include Nagpur (NAG) (124.8 km), Raipur (RPR) (163.2 km) and Jabalpur (JLR) (192.2 km).

History
The airstrip was built by the British in 1940 during World War II as an air force base of the Royal Indian Air Force. After independence, it was initially run by the Public Works Department, and then it was taken over by the state-owned Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) in August 1998 to December 2005, after which it has been operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). The AAI extended the runway at the airport to 7,500 feet to handle larger aircraft such as the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 in 2013.

In March 2022, the low-cost regional airline, FlyBig, commenced regular and direct flight services to Indore and Hyderabad under the government's UDAN Scheme for improving regional connectivity and accessibility to remote regions through air from major regions of India. However, the airline indefinitely suspended operations in August 2022 for unspecified reasons after operating only for five months. Since then, the airport has remained inoperative, until in October 2023, India's largest airline, IndiGo, announced it would restart commercial operations in the airport by starting new flights to Hyderabad on 1 December 2023.

Facilities
The airport has a single runway, oriented 04/22, measuring 2290 m in length and 45 metres in width, with a parallel taxiway connecting to it, measuring 1697 m in length. The main apron measures 100 m × 150 m. The airport is equipped with a Non-directional beacon (NDB), DVOR, Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) and Instrument Landing System (ILS) to support the nighttime landing of aircraft.

National Flying Training Institute (NFTI)
CAE Global Academy Gondia/NFTI commenced operations at the airport after receiving the Directorate General of Civil Aviation's (DGCA) approval on 19 February 2009. The academy is a joint venture between the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and CAE Inc., a Canadian aerospace company. The Gondia School is one of 11 members of the CAE Global Academy network.