The new name of Raja Sansi International Airpor is Amritsar International Airport. The airport is named by the name of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s family name – Sansi. Which is situated on the Amritsar-Ajnala Road, near the village of Raja Sansi. The city of Amritsar, the greater Punjab area, the city of Jalandhar gets the service of this airport. This airport nominated by the government. Every week 150 commercial flights both international and domestic take off and land from this airport.

To meet the increasing demand of the city the Amritsar Airport was recently redecorate a. A newly finished arrivals terminal was instated in September 2005, and a completed departures terminal has been operational since March 2006.The new terminal constructed by glass and steel, but with Indian arches and colors. Which is a combination of modern and Indian design.

To bring an innovative look in the Airport the Authority of Amritsar Raja Sansi Airport has taken those following steps. It is named as development Phase II. These are the followings:

• As Delhi is far away from Punjab, Hariyana and Himachal Pradesh people have to face a great deal of difficulties for cargo services. As there is no choice without Delhi a brand new cargo handling facility is demanded from the exporters.
• A Permanent Perishable Cargo Center site is proposed with the capacity of 200 tones cargo replacement per day. This site is located close to the air cargo complex.
• The Passenger terminal building size is proposed to double than before. And now the size would be 41,000 square meters.
• It is also mentioned that four new aerobridges should be installed.
• The Airport authority thought that parking bays need to be increased from 5 to 9 by 2008 for passenger facilities.
• It is proposed that the runway shall be given a length of 3,658 meters by increasing it 369 meters.
• To give passengers and visitors a new car park should be constructed.

The inauguration flights in August 2006 of Jet Airways’ from Amritsar to London has taken away Amritsar Airport one step ahead than both Delhi-London and Mumbai-London as the load factor has been considerably high. Actually the airport is experiencing an excellent expansion in load factor that is the airlines have upgraded their services from 3 weekly to daily flights. In August & September 2006 the average load factor was 66% whereas in August 2007 it increases into 85%. The average development was 19%.

Air India has also helped to see the Amritsar Airport in a developed look. Air India has upgrades its service of Amritsar-Brimingham-Toronto flights from current 5 weekly flights to daily in 2008. Though it is visible that the traffic of Amritsar Airport is increasing day by day there is no chance to be surprised because less than 74% passengers are from abroad and more than 26% domestic passengers.

From the initial list of 23 bidders the Airport Authority of India has given chance 5 bidders to modernize the Amritsar Airport and they are: (1) Reliance Energy Limited-AAACPL-RADPL-ASA (2) Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide (3) TADL-Changi Airports-Tata Power (4) Lanco Infratech Ltd – Genting (Singapore) Pte Ltd (5) L&T-IDPL-Unique Consortium

It is said that Airports Authority of India (AAI) will take care of those development and modernization plans for the city side non-metro airports. And they are hopeful that through public-private partnership this entire project will be completed within 2010

It is the expectation of the government that with help of each other the selected bidders and the AAI will operate the airports and maintain the works of terminal building at the time of development works. It is also proposed that with at the time of develop and operate cargo facilities in airports city-side development works should be going on.

As order for equipments for ILS-II is placed by AAI and it is expected that those required equipments will be arrived within two months from Germany-based flight safety equipments firm Thalef and soon the commissioning process will take place.

In a report it is said that in this modernization process within 2010 in India 35 non-metro airports should be upgraded.