Benazir Bhutto International Airport is a defunct airport which formerly served the Islamabad-Rawalpindi metropolitan area. It was the second-largest airport by air traffic in Pakistan, until 3 May 2018 when it was replaced by the new Islamabad International Airport. Chaklala Airport, officially known as Islamabad International Airport’s historic predecessor and now home to the Pakistan Air Force’s Nur Khan Base, carries a quiet dignity that few modern terminals can match. Nestled against the gentle slopes of the Margalla Hills, its modest runways have witnessed the roar of Spitfires during the Second World War, the urgent flights of partition refugees in 1947, and the dignified arrivals of kings, presidents, and prime ministers through the decades when Rawalpindi served as Pakistan’s interim capital. The evening light paints the faded control tower gold, and the distant silhouette of the Faisal Mosque rising beyond the hills creates a timeless frame where history and horizon seem to touch.
Walking along its perimeter today, one feels the layered breath of time: the old terminal building, with its graceful mid-century arches and pale sandstone walls, still stands like a courteous elder watching over the gleaming new airport twenty kilometers away. Frangipani and bougainvillea spill over boundary walls while military aircraft rest in reverent silence, their silver bodies catching the sun like sleeping eagles. There is something deeply moving about this place—no longer the frantic heart of civilian travel, yet never abandoned, still alive with purpose, still echoing with the memories of countless journeys that shaped a young nation.
At dusk, when the call to prayer drifts across from nearby mosques and the hills turn violet, Chaklala feels less like an airport and more like a sanctuary of stories. Pilots who once flew daring missions over Kashmir, families who boarded planes with nothing but hope in 1971, diplomats who negotiated peace beneath these same skies—all of them leave an invisible warmth in the air. In an age of glass-and-steel megastructures, Chaklala reminds us that beauty in aviation need not shout; sometimes it simply waits, patient and proud, beneath the quiet turning of propellers that no longer spin and wings that now belong to memory.
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