Tirupati Airport was commissioned in the year 1971. In 1993, then Prime Minister of India P. V. Narasimha Rao laid the foundation stone for a new terminal building, runway expansion and a radio tower at a cost of. The upgraded airport was opened for passenger traffic in 1999 by then Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Tirupati Airport was declared an international airport by the Government of India in June 2017. In order to meet the demands of the anticipated International traffic and International chartered flights, AAI took up expansion of the airport to make it suitable for Code-E type of aircraft. Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu laid the foundation stone for the project on 20 February 2019. Upgrading the airport to Code E will also enable the airport to serve as a diversion airport for the two neighbouring metropolitan International airports of Bengaluru and Chennai, in case of emergencies. The existing runway will be extended extended to. A new apron to accommodate wide-bodied aircraft would also be built and the work is expected to be completed by February 2020.
Facilities
Terminal
A new integrated terminal referred to as Garuda Terminal was constructed adjacent to the existing domestic terminal in an area of at a cost of. It can handle 500 domestic and 200 international passengers at a time. The foundation stone was laid in October 2010 by Manmohan Singh, then Prime Minister of India. Construction began in 2012, and the terminal was inaugurated on 22 October 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The new terminal has 18 check-in-counters, four immigration counters, four baggage conveyors for arrival and one for departure, three baggage claim carousels, two VIP lounges, and parking area for 250 cars.
Runway
The airport has one runway numbered 8/26 which is. Extension work on the runway has been taken up and the current runway will be extended to.
Airlines and destinations
Incidents
On 15 November 1993, Indian Airlines Flight 440, an Airbus 300B2, operating on a scheduled flight from Madras to Hyderabad, crashed into the paddy fields near Tirupati Airport. It had been diverted due to poor weather and ran out of fuel. There were no major injuries, but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair. On 29 January 2019, Air India flight AI 541 from Tirupati to New Delhi via Hyderabad suffered damages after "foreign objects" from the runway hit the underside and wings of the flight during take-off. While the underside just suffered scratches, the wings suffered heavy damage. However, the flight safely landed in Hyderabad and there were no casualties.
