Kurmitola was built in 1941 as the reserve airfield for Tejgaon, according to Wikipedia. In the 1971 war it was, for a few days, the Pakistan Air Force’s fallback: English Wikipedia’s account says it remained operational until 7 December, when MiG-21s of No. 28 Squadron, Indian Air Force, struck it. That account comes largely from Indian sources and is given as such.

Six years later the air base at Kurmitola was where the mutiny of 2 October 1977 started; Wikipedia says the mutineers came from here before the killings at Dhaka airport. In 1981 the civil airport moved from Tejgaon to the long Kurmitola runway, today Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, and the military side has stayed next to the airliners ever since. That arrangement puts Bangladesh’s fighters inside one of the most crowded cities on earth.

The present base was opened as BAF Base Bangabandhu on 9 April 2013 and received the National Standard on 4 December 2016, according to Wikipedia’s summary of Bangladeshi press reports. On 5 November 2019 President Md Abdul Hamid came to Kurmitola to present the National Standard to Nos. 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 71 Squadrons; ISPR noted that the nuclei of Nos. 1 and 3 had been formed in Kilo Flight in 1971.

On 9 March 2025 the interim government, which took office after the fall of Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, announced new names for eight installations, this base among them (Jago News, via Wikipedia). On 10 April 2025 the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Hasan Mahmood Khan, presided over the ceremony at Kurmitola that gave the base its present name. ISPR describes Air Vice Marshal A. K. Khandker as deputy chief of staff of the Mukti Bahini, the air force’s first Chief of Air Staff, who reorganised a war-damaged force, and a recipient of the Bir Uttam and of the Independence Award in 2011.

Almost the whole of Bangladesh’s front-line fighter force lives at this one base, beside an international airport in a city of millions. Wikipedia places the F-7BG and F-7BGI of Nos. 5 and 35 Squadrons and the MiG-29s of No. 8 Squadron here. The MiG-29s are the eight bought from Russia in 1999, a purchase that led to a corruption case filed in 2001 and ended in acquittals in 2011 (The Daily Star); the 16 F-7BGIs entered service in 2013, according to Wikipedia. The Business Standard counted 44 fighters in the air force in late 2025: 36 F-7s and 8 MiG-29s.

Their successors are undecided. The Business Standard reported a plan to buy 20 Chinese J-10CE fighters for about $2.2 billion, and in 2026 a government adviser told the South China Morning Post that a draft proposal had been submitted but not finalised. The Chief of Air Staff has also signed a letter of intent with Leonardo for the Eurofighter Typhoon, with no quantity published. Where any new fighter will be based, given the inquiry’s call to move training out of Dhaka, has not been announced.

At 13:06 local time on 21 July 2025 an FT-7BGI two-seater, serial 2701, took off from the base with Flight Lieutenant Towkir Islam Sagar on his first solo flight. At 13:12 it crashed into the campus of Milestone School and College in Uttara, a few kilometres to the north, and burned. Many of the victims were children.

The death toll is reported differently. Wikipedia and The Business Standard give 37 after a 15-year-old girl died of burns weeks later; the official inquiry counted 36; the health directorate revised its figure down to 29 on 23 July. Wikipedia gives 173 injured. The pilot was among the dead.

The inquiry, led by Lt Gen SM Kamrul Hassan and formed on 29 July 2025, found pilot error. It recommended that all initial flying training move out of Dhaka, that the airstrips at Barishal and Bogura be upgraded for it, that schools be kept out of the take-off and landing funnels, and that fire stations get foam tenders (The Business Standard). The Chief of Air Staff argued that a strong air base in Dhaka remains essential, according to Wikipedia.