Hindon AirportGhaziabad Civil Terminal

Hindon is the quiet third option in Delhi NCR, after IGI and the new Noida International Airport at Jewar. It is a civil enclave inside a large Indian Air Force station in Ghaziabad, working from a single pre-engineered terminal with eight check-in counters, two baggage belts and capacity for roughly 300 passengers an hour. Flights here run under the government’s Regional Connectivity Scheme, and services have linked Ghaziabad directly with around ten cities including Bengaluru, Kolkata, Varanasi, Indore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Patna, Goa and Mumbai.

The practical thing to know about arriving here is that it does not behave like a metro airport. Vehicle access is controlled because of the Air Force station, the schedule is thin enough that taxis do not idle outside waiting for fares, and an arrival that lands into a quiet terminal can leave you with very little on the kerb. That is the case for booking ahead: we track your flight, hold the car free for 60 minutes after you actually land, and the driver meets you at the arrival exit with a nameboard.

Distances from Hindon are short in the directions that matter. Ghaziabad city is 8 km and about twenty minutes at ₹500 in a sedan; Noida Sector 18 is 25 km at ₹900; Connaught Place is 30 km at ₹1,000; Meerut is 55 km at ₹1,600. Being on the eastern edge of NCR also makes it a slightly better start point than IGI for Uttarakhand and western Uttar Pradesh — Haridwar is 180 km at ₹3,200, Agra 200 km at ₹3,600 down the Yamuna Expressway. If your destination is central Delhi or Gurgaon, though, we will say plainly that IGI is usually the better airport to fly into.