Agra Airport


Agra Airport is a military airbase and public airport serving the city of Agra, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. The air force station is one of the largest airbases of the Indian Air Force and has been synonymous with the Taj Mahal for over half a century. On 15 August 2007, the airbase celebrated its sixtieth anniversary.

History

The station was opened during World War II as Royal Air Forces Station Agra and had a number of flying units located there. It was closed after the war and transferred to the Royal Indian Air Force. The prefix Royal was later dropped and the station was later renamed. Air Force Station Agra was established on 15 August 1947 and placed under the command of Wing Commander Shivdev Singh, who was the incumbent commander of the No. 12 Sqn. Based on the then present system of Commands, the airfield fell under the responsibility of the Western Air Command. The base remained under this Theatre Command for the next two decades. In July 1971 it was transferred to the Central Air Command, where it remains today.
During its sixty-year history with the IAF, it has seen the likes of C-47 Dakotas, C-119 Packets, HS 748 'Avros', AN-12s, AN-32s, IL-76s, Canberras, IL-78 MKI and now the Airborne Early Warning and Control/AWACS.
The station now has the honour of holding the first inflight refueling aircraft Squadron in IAF service, with No 78 ‘Mid Air Refuelling Squadron’ Squadron flying the IL-78MKIs.
During World War II, the United States Army Air Forces Air Technical Service Command established a major maintenance and supply facility at Agra, named "Agra Air Depot". The 3rd Air Depot Group serviced a wide variety of fighter, bomber and transport aircraft being used by Tenth Air Force and the Allied ground forces in Burma and Fourteenth Air Force in China. The depot stockpiled large amounts of material for shipment over the Himalayan Mountains by Air Transport Command cargo aircraft flying to forward airfields in China. It also was a major stopover point on the ATC Karachi-Kunming air transport route. The airport is mentioned in a chapter in Ernest Gann's Fate Is the Hunter, wherein he relays a story of coming with feet of destroying the Taj Mahal in a severely overloaded C-87 after takeoff.

Developments

has been tasked with the operations of the newly inducted Beriev A-50E/I Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft. The AWACS has been mounted on a specially designed IL-76 with advanced avionics & telecommunication systems.

Airlines and destinations