This airport is slated to be the Multimodal International Hub Airport in India and development work started in 2005. The plan involves construction of a second runway, a new terminal building and a cargo complex through a build-operate-transfer basis. The Maharashtra Government had offered 400 hectares of land to the Indian Air Force (IAF) in exchange of 278 hectares of land at the airport currently occupied by Air Force Station, Nagpur. The proposal has been agreed 'in principle' to by the IAF.[6] This will help reducing the load on other busy airports in India by diverting the cargo and passenger traffic to Nagpur and will also make Nagpur city one among the most important business and economic centers in India and Asia.
The Airport was commissioned during the First World War in 1917-18. The old buildings at the airport were renovated during the Second World War, when it was used as a staging base. Due to brisk traffic at the airport new terminal buildings featuring facilities of refreshment, retiring rooms, rest-rooms, book stalls and visitor's galleries were constructed in 1953. Sonegaon airport was the hub of the unique "Night Air Mail Service" wherein four planes left from Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras every night with a mail load from their region and returned to their home base in the early morning, after exchanging the mail at Nagpur. The service was operated from January 1949 until October 1973. Over the years its major traffic was civilian aircraft till the formation of 44 Wing and the transfer of the Il-76 military transport aircraft of the IAF in 2003.
The New Integrated Terminal Building, a contemporary concrete, glass and steel structure, was inaugurated on 14 April 2008. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has extensively modified and upgraded the existing Terminal Building at the cost of INR79 crores to make it into a modern, world class Integrated Terminal Building. The building covers an area of 17,500 square metres and has a capacity to handle 400 arriving and 400 departing domestic passengers and 150 arriving and 150 departing international passengers during peak hours. It has 2 conveyor belts each in Departure, the Domestic Arrival Hall and in the International Arrival Hall.
The Integrated Terminal Building is equipped with modern facilities such as central air-conditioning, passenger bridges with Visual Docking Guidance System, escalators, lifts, baggage conveyor system in Arrival and Departure Halls, CCTV, FIDS and other such modern passenger amenities of international standards. A car park to accommodate 600 cars at a time, has also been built. The terminals air-side features two aerobridges and eight new parking bays that take the total number of parking bays at the airport to eighteen.
For improving city side connectivity, a new approach road to connect the terminal building with the main highway has been constructed. To improve the ATM and communication, navigation facilities at Nagpur airport, AAI plans to construct a New Control Tower and Technical Block with all modern CNS ATM facilities. The airport is at a distance of only 15 minutes from Nagpur Railway Station. For passenger facilitation and convenience the new terminal building has been provided with 20 check-in counters and 20 immigration counters. It has modern facilities like a restaurant, snack bar, child care room, bank, ATM, concessionaire and medical inspection rooms.
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