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On July 15, Union Civil Aviation Minister Rammohan Naidu Kinjarapu drove down to Dholera to see the airport for himself. He wasn’t alone — the Civil Aviation Secretary and the AAI Chairman came along too. That’s a fairly senior delegation, which tells you this project has real attention in Delhi, not just in Gandhinagar.
Two things came out of that visit:
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- The Minister said construction is roughly 80% complete.
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- He’s now targeting September or October 2026 for the airport to open — though he was careful to say it “may” happen by year-end, not that it definitely will. Worth remembering: Indian infrastructure timelines shift often, so treat this as the current best guess, not a promise.
Background
This airport has actually been in the works for a while. Gujarat first proposed a site near Navagam, just north of Dholera, back when the original Dholera masterplan was drawn up — the idea being that Ahmedabad’s airport was getting crowded, and Dholera SIR would need its own air link to attract serious industry.
The real momentum started in June 2022, when the central government’s Cabinet cleared Phase 1 at a cost of ₹1,305 crore. By January 2024, the company building it — DIACL — had handed out a ₹333 crore contract to build the passenger terminal, the air traffic control tower, and the cargo facility.
DIACL, by the way, isn’t a private company — it’s a joint venture between the Airports Authority of India (51% stake), the Gujarat government (33%), and NICDIT (16%), the body overseeing India’s industrial corridor projects. So this is very much a government-backed project, not a speculative private venture.
The runway itself — 3,200 metres — is already built to Code 4E standard, meaning it can handle large, wide-body aircraft, not just small regional planes.
Aircraft Manufacturing
Coverage of the July 15 visit also mentioned something worth flagging: Embraer and Adani Aviation Systems have signed an MoU to set up an aircraft assembly line at the Dholera airport by 2028 — reportedly India’s first civilian “Make in India” aircraft manufacturing line. The MoU itself is real and signed. Whether the 2028 assembly line actually happens on schedule is, for now, still a stated plan rather than something built and running.
What’s Left
The remaining ~20% isn’t nothing — it includes:
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- Finishing the interiors and systems inside the terminal
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- Getting the licences and safety certifications in place (DGCA and related approvals)
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- Running operational trials before the airport can actually open for business
Our Assessment
Here’s how we’d read this, plainly: the exact “September–October” date matters less than what this visit signals. Having the Union Minister show up in person, with the AAI Chairman alongside him, tells you this project has sustained backing at the national level — that’s a meaningful positive sign. At the same time, we’ve watched enough Indian infrastructure projects to know that launch dates tend to slip by a few months, sometimes more. So our advice: treat late-2026 as a reasonable target to plan around, not a date to bet everything on.