Hindan’s IAF story begins after the 1965 war. English Wikipedia’s squadron history places No. 7 Squadron’s Hunters here from November 1965; the station article says they moved to Bagdogra in 1969, although the squadron article still has them at Hindan in December 1971. No. 3 Squadron flew Mystère IVAs from Hindan around the 1971 war and moved to Pathankot in 1975.

The airfield had a weakness. Wikipedia says the ornithologist Salim Ali identified Hindan in the mid-1980s as prone to bird strikes, blaming slaughterhouses nearby and the industrial belt of Ghaziabad. After three aircraft crashes in 1997 the IAF gave up Hindan as a fighter base and turned it over to helicopters and transports. The individual 1997 accidents are not detailed in the sources used here.

The move did not last. In 2003, Rediff News reported at the time, the IAF rethought Hindan because of the renewed threat of an air attack on Delhi: fighters based here could be over the capital in about five minutes, against fifteen or more from other stations. The base was reactivated for the air defence of Delhi, and after the Mumbai attacks of November 2008 MiG-29s were deployed here, according to Wikipedia’s summary of Indian press reports.

Wikipedia’s station article also lists Jaguar and MiG-21 squadrons at Hindan; those listings are undated, conflict with the squadrons’ own histories and are not repeated here. A Modernisation of Air Field Infrastructure programme began in 2009 and the runway was extended in 2011.

Hindan is more than a runway. Wikipedia lists it as a training base of the Garud Commando Force, the IAF’s special forces, and in September 2005 the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal S. P. Tyagi, earned his parachute wings here, as the Tribune reported. In August 2007 the base was chosen for a pilot project in joint civil-military airspace management with the Airports Authority of India, a first step towards the civil flights that began a decade later.

Hindan’s modern identity came with American aircraft. No. 77 Squadron, the Veiled Vipers, was constituted on 5 February 2011 with the first C-130J Super Hercules, bought for special operations: airdrops and landings at night and on short, high strips. On 20 August 2013 one landed at Daulat Beg Oldi in Ladakh at 16,614 ft, which Wikipedia calls the highest C-130J landing. One aircraft was lost in 2014 and replaced in 2019.

No. 81 Squadron, the Sky Lords, formed on 1 September 2013 with the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III; the eleventh and last arrived in August 2019. Wikipedia credits the C-17s with relief flights to Nepal after the 2015 earthquake, the Yemen evacuation of 2015, the rapid move of troops to Ladakh during the 2020–21 stand-off with China, oxygen tanks during the COVID-19 shortage and the evacuation of Indians and Afghans from Kabul in August 2021. On 25 September 2023 Hindan was also the scene of the formal induction of the first Airbus C-295, the Avro’s replacement.

In 2006 the Air Force Day parade moved to Hindan from Palam, with a 66-aircraft display on 8 October 2006 for the 74th anniversary, according to Wikipedia; in 2025 the full dress rehearsal for the 93rd anniversary was flown here on 6 October. In June 2007 two IAF wing commanders, Rahul Monga and Anil Kumar, took off from Hindan in a microlight to fly round the world in 80 days; they covered 40,497 km, but the FAI declined to recognise the record for lack of documentation.

In 2017 the IAF agreed to let civil flights use the base. A 45.2 crore rupee terminal on 7.5 acres at Sikandarpur, built by the Airports Authority of India for 300 passengers an hour, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 March 2019 for regional flights. Air traffic control stays with the IAF.