Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport (IXC) — Airport Guide 2026

🏢 Terminal & the Shared Runway

The terminal opened in October 2015 — inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 11 September 2015, built by Larsen & Toubro, roughly 53,000 square metres, designed to handle about 1,600 passengers at peak. Domestic and international processing share one building, which makes sense given the international operation amounts to a handful of Gulf rotations a day. It replaced a cramped older civil enclave where Indian Airlines had been running Delhi services since the 1970s.

What the terminal is sitting on is the more important fact. IXC shares its single runway (11/29, about 3,170 m / 10,400 ft, ILS-equipped, wide-body capable — CAT-I ILS on runway 11, CAT-II on runway 29) with active Indian Air Force operations. Since 10 April 2019 the airport has been cleared for 24-hour civilian operations, but in practice flight times cluster around airline demand and military movements; there is no rolling all-night civilian flow.

The building itself is modern and uncomplicated. Check-in islands face the entrance, security sits behind them, a single departures concourse feeds the gates. Arrivals and departures are on different levels; the prepaid-taxi and app-cab pickup points are outside arrivals; the CTU shuttle stops on the access road. Trolleys are free, washrooms are maintained, signage is bilingual Hindi–English. There is no hotel inside the secure zone — the nearest branded option (including a JW Marriott) is a short drive toward Mohali.

At the early-morning IndiGo bank, when half a dozen departures push out within an hour, the single security screening line is the bottleneck. Mid-morning or early afternoon it’s a calm building. Give yourself the standard two hours for domestic and three for international. The international apron sees only the small daily Gulf operation, so immigration on arrival is quick unless two flights land close together.

Growth note: 4.15 million passengers in FY24/25 is up 11.5% on the previous year and almost all domestic. The terminal no longer feels oversized at the early peak it was sized for when it opened. There is no second terminal and no published timeline for one; the runway’s ILS upgrade was the last major infrastructure change, completed before the current terminal era.

One consequence of the shared field worth knowing if you’re a nervous flyer: you may sit on the ground longer than expected while military movements clear, and you will be asked to keep window shades down and cameras away during taxi, take-off and landing. That’s standard at India’s joint civil-military airports.

🛂 Visa & Entry

India runs no general visa-on-arrival. Almost every foreign visitor needs a visa arranged before travelling.

### e-Tourist Visa (standard route)

Apply at the government portal indianvisaonline.gov.in — the only official site. The field is crowded with commercial agents who add a markup and add no value. Three tiers:

• 30-day single-entry: US$25 for most of the year, US$10 during April–June. Valid up to six months from grant.
• 1-year multiple-entry: US$40. Maximum 180 days’ stay per calendar year.
• 5-year multiple-entry: US$80. Same 180-days-per-year cap.

Add roughly 3% bank transaction surcharge. Apply at least four days before travel — the portal won’t process last-minute submissions. The e-Visa is issued as an electronic travel authorisation: print it and carry it alongside your passport at immigration. Officers occasionally ask for proof of onward departure as well.

Not eligible for e-Visa: Pakistani nationals and people of Pakistani origin must apply for a paper visa through an Indian mission. Everyone else who needs a class other than the tourist tiers also uses the paper process.

No longer required: The Air Suvidha health form, mandatory during the pandemic years, has been discontinued. Don’t waste time hunting for it.

Nepal and Bhutan nationals enter visa-free.

### Health Requirements

No vaccination is required for arrivals from most countries. The one mandatory rule: if you are arriving from or have transited a yellow-fever-risk country, you must carry a valid yellow-fever vaccination certificate taken at least 10 days before arrival — without it you risk quarantine. Coming straight from Europe, the Gulf or North America, this doesn’t apply. The standard north-India practical advice: carry a basic stomach-upset kit, because the food is excellent and your gut may take a day or two to agree with it.

💱 Currency & Customs

India uses the Indian rupee (INR, ₹). As of late May 2026, approximately ₹95 to the US dollar and ₹111 to the euro — verify on the day; the rupee drifted weaker through 2025–26. Notes run ₹10, ₹20, ₹50, ₹100, ₹200, ₹500; coins to ₹20. The ₹2,000 note was withdrawn in 2023, so ₹500 is the top denomination you’ll handle.

There is no black-market rate worth chasing. Use ATMs at the terminal or in Sector 17 for the official rate, which is consistently better than airport money-changers. Card acceptance is wide in the city; UPI app payments are everywhere. Keep a stock of small notes (₹10–100) for autos, tips and street food — drivers and vendors rarely break a ₹500.

There is no separate arrival or departure tax to pay in cash — passenger charges are included in the ticket. No tourist permit is needed for Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana or the roads to Shimla and Manali.

Duty-free: India’s 2026 baggage rules apply a flat 10% customs duty on dutiable goods above the free allowance — check the current limits before loading up, because they change and the green-channel rules are enforced. The duty-free shop at IXC is modest: standard spirits, tobacco, perfume, confectionery. If you’re routing onward through Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Sharjah, those airports have far larger selections at similar or better prices; there’s little reason to shop heavily here.

🚆 Getting Into the City

The airport sits in Mohali, about 12 km from Sector 17 as the crow flies and roughly 19 km by the road most cabs take. Allow 20–30 minutes to Sector 17 in normal traffic, longer during morning and evening peaks. The airport serves a tri-city sprawl — Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula — so where you’re headed changes the fare more than the headline distance.

The auto-rickshaw option — three-wheelers outside arrivals, ₹200–350 agreed up front (meters rarely used) — is fine for a solo traveller with a backpack and a short ride. Fix the fare before you sit down.

Onward to the hills: There is no metro or rail link at the airport. The nearest railway is Chandigarh Junction in the city. For the mountains, the standard pattern is cab or shuttle to ISBT-43, then a Himachal Pradesh or CTU coach onward.

The plain comparison: App cab wins on speed and door-to-door convenience; prepaid taxi wins on certainty if you don’t want to deal with apps; the ₹100 shuttle wins on price if you’re flexible and headed to a bus-station hub; auto-rickshaw is the cheap-and-cheerful option for light luggage. For most arriving visitors with bags, an app cab or prepaid taxi to the hotel is the right call.

🛋️ Lounges

The Primus Lounge operates on both the domestic and international sides of the terminal, and both accept Priority Pass, Indian bank-card programmes (DreamFolks and similar aggregators), and paid walk-in entry. The domestic Primus runs roughly 04:00–23:00; the international-side Primus posts longer nominal hours tied to the Gulf-flight schedule. Expect hot Indian and continental buffet, bar, seating, charging, Wi-Fi — standard mid-tier Indian airport lounge.

🍽️ Food Before You Fly

This is Punjab, and the airport is the wrong place to eat it.

The regional dishes worth knowing: butter chicken (murgh makhani, invented in this part of north India), Amritsari kulcha (a stuffed, crisped flatbread baked with potato or paneer, served with chana and a dollop of butter), chole bhature (spiced chickpeas with a puffed fried bread), sarson da saag with makki di roti (mustard greens with cornflour flatbread, a winter staple), lassi in a steel tumbler larger than any wine glass you’ll encounter elsewhere.

The sweets here are taken seriously. Jalebi — orange spirals of fried batter soaked in syrup, best eaten warm and dripping — costs roughly ₹40–60 for a portion at a town sweet shop and travels better than it has any right to. Pinni (dense balls of flour, ghee and nuts) and gulab jamun complete the standard counter at any decent mithai shop.

Inside the terminal, the usual captive-audience pricing applies: a coffee-chain latte runs ₹250–350, a sandwich or plate of the day ₹400–600, a bottle of water ₹50–100 against a street price of ₹20. The food court covers the basics — Indian thalis, a coffee chain, fast food — but it’s transit fuel, not a meal worth planning around.

A caution on “restaurants near the airport” listed online: the café at the JW Marriott and Swagath Restaurant are a couple of kilometres out toward the city, not inside the secure terminal. Relevant if you have a long pre-flight window and a cab; irrelevant once you’re through security.

If you’re flying out on a Gulf route and want a take-home that’s actually from this region: Indian tea (Darjeeling, Assam) and spices bought in Sector 17’s markets beat anything in the duty-free shop and cost a fraction of the price.

🏙️ The City & Himalayan Hinterland

Chandigarh is Le Corbusier’s grid-planned experiment from 1951 — the only Indian city a French-Swiss modernist laid out from scratch. The Capitol Complex (the High Court, Secretariat, Legislative Assembly and the Open Hand Monument, described as “open to give, open to receive” and serving as the city’s emblem) was inscribed by UNESCO in 2016 as part of the transnational listing of Le Corbusier’s work. Visiting requires joining a free guided tour, since the buildings are working government offices; bring passport ID and check current timings through Chandigarh Tourism. It’s about 10–15 km from the airport.

The grid logic that makes the city readable also makes it sprawling. Le Corbusier and his team divided Chandigarh into numbered sectors of roughly 800 by 1,200 metres, each self-sufficient with its own market, school and green space, separated by fast roads. Sector 17 is the commercial heart — a pedestrian plaza of concrete arcades that was radical in the 1950s and reads now as period modernism. Sector 1 holds the Capitol Complex. The Rock Garden and Sukhna Lake sit at the city’s northeast edge. Addresses are logical (sector, then block), and a cab driver can find anything from a sector number, but you’ll spend on taxis between sectors; there’s no dense walkable core beyond Sector 17.

The Zakir Hussain Rose Garden adds a third option, more useful in the late-winter flowering season.

### The Himalayan Run — Honest Layover Maths

• Shimla — 112–115 km, 3–3.5 hours one-way by road. Round-trip driving alone is 6–7 hours before you’ve seen anything. A stay destination, not a layover excursion.
• Kalka–Shimla toy train — the narrow-gauge UNESCO World Heritage line built in 1903, climbing about 96 km from Kalka (roughly 30 km / 45 minutes from the airport) through more than 100 tunnels to Shimla in approximately 5–6 hours. The experience is genuinely the point. It is also slow by design and impractical as anything but a full-day or multi-day commitment.
• Kasauli — 58 km, 1.5–2 hours one-way. The nearest hill town with any real altitude. Borderline viable on a long layover of 8 hours or more with a private cab, but tight; better as an overnight trip.
• Manali — 307 km, 8–9 hours by road, usually done overnight. Multi-day destination.

The clear-eyed version: you can be in the lower Himalaya in an afternoon’s drive from IXC, but none of the hill stations works as a between-flights excursion. What does work on a 5–6 hour layover is the Rock Garden and Sukhna Lake in the city. Leave Shimla for a proper visit.

📶 Connectivity & Practicalities

Wi-Fi and SIM. The terminal has free Wi-Fi, typically requiring an OTP sent to your phone — which is the catch for an arriving foreigner without an Indian number. Buy a tourist SIM on arrival: Airtel and Jio are the two options, with prepaid tourist plans at roughly ₹299–500 (about US$3.50–6) for 28–30 days of generous daily data, unlimited local calls and some SMS. Airtel has the smoother foreigner-onboarding process at major airports; activation can take a few hours and requires your passport and visa. eSIM options exist for supported phones. Coverage in Chandigarh and on the Shimla road is solid; it thins toward Manali in the deeper valleys.

Tipping. Not obligatory but expected: ₹30–50 per bag for porters, ₹50–100 per night for hotel housekeeping at mid-range places (more at luxury), approximately 10% at restaurants that don’t already add a service charge. Cab and auto drivers don’t expect a tip beyond rounding up.

Safety. Chandigarh is one of India’s calmer, more navigable cities — planned, comparatively low-crime, logically addressed by sector number. Agree auto fares before riding, ignore anyone who tells you your hotel is closed and offers to redirect you, and use the in-app price for cabs. Petty crime is low by Indian-city standards but watch bags in the Sector 17 plaza crowds. The airport’s military setting means visible security and strict ID checks throughout; keep your passport and boarding pass to hand.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

📊 At a Glance — IXC 2026