Opened in 1924, DumDum Airport, later renamed as Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, is one of the oldest Airport not only in India but in entire South East Asia. Situated within the city limits of the Kolkata, it is presently served by domestic airlines like Air India, IndiGo, GoAir, Vistara, SpiceJet, Air Asia India as well as international carriers like Emirates, Fly Dubai, Saudi Air, Cathay Pacific, Biman Bangladesh, Bhutan Airlines, Druk Air etc.

But its past is even more interesting than its present. Throughout its history, it has been served by the iconic airlines like KLM, BOAC, later British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, Japan Airlines, Quantas, Swiss Air, Alitalia, SAS and Pan-Am. It has played important role in WW2 and hosted planes like B24 liberator, C47 Dakota, deHaviland Comet (first jet powered civilian aircraft) etc as well as people like Amelia Earhart (1937).

For an airport with such rich history and relevant present, it is unfortunate that it’s represented in MSFS in a very sad state. Way too low number or parking spots, incorrect taxiway names, almost no night lighting etc. are the major issues with the default scenery. So, I created this mod with the plan to mitigate some of those issues to best of my abilities. Having a family with an infant and a full-time day job takes most of the time I have, on top of that I am not really an airport developer, I don’t have 3d modelling and texturing skills, I'd rather be flying the planes than make airports. But this being my home airport, and nobody else having made it for me, I decided to give it a try. The first attempt failed miserably, but I believe the second attempt yielded a result which can be a base for further improvements. So I am sharing this mod and plan to improve it as and when my time allows.

I followed the airport information available on https://aim-india.aai.aero/ for reference. I have not visited the airport personally (I know, ironic), so cannot comment on how accurate this rendition is.

Features:

14-09-2022 (v0.5)

• Added all parking spots as seen in parking charts. There are some caveats though. See known issues.
• Correct taxiway network and naming along with signage as per aerodrome charts.
• Custom taxiway marking (this is a bit of personal taste and may not be accurate). Modified from stock asobo textures.
• Guard lights (wig wags), stop bars, centerline and edge lights as specified in airport information text.
• Runway lights as specified in airport information text (although there may be some inaccuracy due to me not understanding the meaning of certain terms)
• Some much needed apron lights so that it looks like an airport at night. Uses stock models and currently there is no plans for creating custom models.

21-11-2022 (v0.8)

• Added various static objects like GSE equipment, static airplanes etc. around the airport apron to make it look a bit more lively.
• Placed some hangar objects with open doors and static aircrafts inside them for a better immersion.
• Added custom modeled glass walled jetway with lights and stand numbers (credits to OltcitRoom youtube channel for creating an awesome tutorial about how to do it in blender.)
• Added a lot of different ground markings like taxiway designators and parking spot designators.
• Added red striped safety areas (don't know what they are actually called) near the jetways.
• Placed a lot of ground textures (mostly stock materials) to make the aprons look a bit "not brand new".
• Added RESA area at the end of the runways according to the aerodrome chart.

29-12-2022 (v0.8.1)

• No new features in this minor patch.
• Minor bug fixes related to AI traffic and some other things. Details in changelog. Should have been out earlier but this have been a very busy and stressfull December for me.

28-07-2024 (v0.8.2)

• Minor bug fix in jetway lights when connecting with PMDG 777 and TFDi MD11.

Dependencies:

• FSLTL base package (injector not needed but recommended) (for static aircrafts) (not available in flightsim.to, download from FBW installer)
• AIG (Models only, controller not needed) (Indian carriers like IndiGo, SpiceJet, AirIndia, Vistara, GoAir, AirAsia etc.) (for static aircrafts) (not available from flightsim.to, download from AIG AI manager)
• MSFS 2020 object library with 200+ models from towers hangars to cones (v14 adds fences) by colinj
• Superspud Airport Asset Library by superspud
• SDR Scenery Pack V1.5 by Blinn
• totof library object V5 by Totof33120
• TurtleTank's Scenery Developer Objects and Material Library by TurtleTank1997

Known Issues:

• This airport has a number of parking spots which are either two small parking spots or one big parking spot, i.e suitable for either 2 B737/A320s or 1 B777. This type of config causes an issue in MSFS related to jetways. As MSFS has no option to have a single jetway serve more than one parking spots, currently some of the parking spots even if near jetways are marked as ramp and jetways cannot be used by them.
• Sometimes on parking spots meant for larger planes (stand 55-61, NOT the L/R ones), if a smaller plane like A320/B737 is parked, the jetway may not work.
• On some gates with some planes, GSX asks if user wants to move airplane to default postiton. Not sure why this happens and it does not happen with all airplanes. I faced the issue with PMDG 737 and LSH MaddogX but did not happen with FBW A32NX / Fenix A320 / A310. On selecting "no" GSX proceeds normally with aircraft at the same position jetways work without any issues, on selecting "yes" the plane is warped a bit forward/backward automatically and then GSX proceeds normally, here also jetways work normally. So this is upto you. This will depend on the type of the aircraft, so if jetways doesn't work for some aircrafts, try the other option and jetways may work.

MSFS 2020 SU16 compatibility (22-05-2025):

With the release of MSFS 2020 SU16 Beta, I noticed that there is good news and there is bad news.

Good news is that now MSFS 2020 is swtiching to more updated aerials, which means now Ill have less work to do to enable the updated airport layout with the new taxiway extensions towards the north of the airport. Hopefully I'll be able to add those sometime in the future when I get enough time to put towards it.

The bad news is that the new aerial details doesn't line up correctly with the existing details like runways and taxiways. And because the source of this porject is such a unorganized sphagheti, it may just be easier to redo all those from scratch instead of trying to fix those, I'll evaluate if its possible to do without much effort.

Also there is a bug now, there appears to be a row of building spanning across the middle of airport, which is present in 2024 too, so guess its due to the bing data. This should be easy to fix so, I just may provide a patch for this once SU16 becomes mainline build.

MSFS 2024 (in)compatibility:

As of now, it seems to be very broken in MSFS 2024. The taxiway lights are way too bright, jetways are broken and I am not sure if all the dependency packages work right in MSFS 2024 or not. I was hoping by this time we would get a good enough payware airport for VECC but alas. So, the plan is that there is no plan. First I would need to spend some time in MSFS 2024 SDK to understand how to fix those, specially the jetways. If and only if I am able to do that, then I'll try to update the airport, and then I will also use the new areals available in 2024.

Planned features:

• For now, I find the autogen buildings serviceable but I plan to add simple custom models for the Integrated terminal (currently in development), and may be old terminal and ATC tower. No timeline as of now as I am learning blender and texture creation, so progress is slow. Not even sure if I'll be able to do all those buildings. So don't hold your breath. Edit 2024: Unfortunately the status is still the same. I was hoping someone else with more modelling experience will be able to help out here, but nothing has panned out.
• I plan to update the layout to current layout as of 2024, but since this requires using a new aerial image to get good results, I'll have to use Google aerial images. Which I have done on my internal dev builds, but it doesn't line up properly with the existing features and that means having to move everything little bit again to line them up. That's time consuming when you have thousands of small items to adjust. And MSFS 2024 is planned to be shipped with new aerial data (which is supposed to come to 2020 as well), so I may have to redo that part again when that launches. Unfortunately due to more responsibilities in my dayjob as well as in my family (growing toddler), I have very little time to fly, let alone work on this. Hopefully during holdays I'll be able to work on this.

 Special Thanks:

• rahulC (beta test and feedback)
• Kaalicharan (beta test and feedback)
• OltcitRoom YouTube channel for creating the jetway tutorial
• All the authors and contributors of the listed dependencies.

Note: Please expect and report bugs and I'll try to address them as possible.

Note: If you use RexSimulations global airport textures then some ground textures will look a bit different. Which one looks better is upto you and you need to enable or disable that addon based on your preference.