It is located near the town of Sahnewal, 12 km (7.5 mi) south-east of Ludhiana on the Grand Trunk Road.

The only commercial airline the airport had was Alliance Air, which connected it to Delhi with regular flights until April 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since then, the airport remained closed, until when in September 2023, the low-cost regional carrier, FlyBig, restarted flight operations to Dehradun with a stopover at Ghaziabad on 6 September 2023, as part of the government's UDAN Scheme.

[4] As the airport is too small to accommodate future traffic and demands, and due to zero scopes available to expand the airport because of urban growth around it, in 2019, the Ministry of Civil Aviation decided to build a passenger terminal at the existing Indian Air Force's base at Halwara, located 34 km (21 mi) south-west of Ludhiana.

After its completion in the end of 2023, the Sahnewal airport will be closed for commercial operations.