Major airlines are hesitant to shift to Navi Mumbai Airport. Click to know the reason
As the new Navi Mumbai airport gets ready to open in March 2025, Adani Airport Holdings (AAHL), which runs the airport, is having trouble convincing big airlines like IndiGo and Air India to move their operations from Mumbai.
A year ago, AAHL wanted at least one major airline to shift to Navi Mumbai, offering them good time slots, but IndiGo and Air India haven’t shown interest.
The CEO of IndiGo, Pieter Elbers, said recently that Mumbai’s current airport is still useful, and they need to plan how both airports will work together.
AAHL is talking to different airlines, but it’s hard to get them to use the new airport because it has limited transport options to and from Mumbai city, even though it’s bigger and more modern.
The Navi Mumbai airport, which will be able to handle 20 million passengers in its first phase and has cost Rs 19,600 crores, should have its first flight by the end of the 2025 financial year. Until then, Mumbai’s current airport will keep getting crowded.
There’s a problem with how to get people to and from Navi Mumbai because there’s only road access for now. Even though construction started in August 2021, work on the 40-km metro line connecting Navi Mumbai to Mumbai airport hasn’t started, and they’re still waiting for permission from the government.
The Adani group is hopeful they’ll get approvals in time. By mid-January, they’d finished 78% of the first runway, which is 3,700 meters long. They expect to finish the rest by the end of the year’s monsoon.
