The Ahmednagar district administration officially acquired land for the greenfield airport project on 22 December 2009. The Rs. 340 crore airport project was part of the State Government's effort to promote religious tourism at Shirdi, known for the temple of Sai Baba, among the most revered spiritual gurus in India. Around 80,000 devotees who visit the temple town daily used to access Shirdi via road, Sainagar Shirdi Railway Station, Kopargaon Railway Station and the Aurangabad and Pune airports located 125 km and 186 km respectively from Shirdi. The single runway was initially intended to be 60 metres wide and 2,000 metres long and the airport was expected to start operations in December 2011. However, the MADC decided to extend the length of the runway to 3,200 metres to enable operations of larger aircraft and consequently the project missed its deadline. Runway length now stands at 2,500 metres. Plans for a terminal building costing around Rs 40 crore were abandoned due to shortage of funds and a smaller terminal costing 3- 4 crores was built instead. The work was expected to be completed before the forthcoming centenary celebrations of Sai Baba's Samadhi that will draw thousands of devotees to the pilgrim town from various parts of the country as well as abroad. MADC completed the construction work by February 2016 and applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation for an aerodrome licence to commence operation of non-scheduled flights. The DGCA issued the licence on 21 September 2017 and stated that the runway of 2,500 meters is capable of handling Code 3C type aircraft such as the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737. An Alliance Air ATR-72 operated a test run from Mumbai airport, landing at Shirdi on 26 September 2017.
Airlines and Destinations
Infrastructure
The airport is equipped with a runway in length. The terminal covers and has a capacity for 500 passengers daily. In July 2019, the state government gave approvals for the extension of the runway from to, construction of a new terminal building to increase hourly passenger capacity from 300 per hour to 1000 per hour and operationalisation of night-landing facilities at the airport. The work is expected to be completed in Eighteen months. A DVOR system was installed at the airport in September 2019 to enable aircraft to land at the airport in low visibility.
