When can you fly from Navi Mumbai airport? Check new airline schedules here

Flying to or from Mumbai? Come December 25, you will have an option to take a flight from the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA).

India’s largest airline, IndiGo, as well as rival Akasa Air, have announced plans to start flights from NMIA from Christmas Day onwards. Initially, only limited flights are expected at the new airport, with operations to be ramped up over time.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the NMIA on October 8. For now, it will have one operational terminal and one runway, with three more terminals and a second runway spanning over 1,160 hectares to be developed over the coming years. It will have an initial capacity of 20 million passengers per annum, eventually expanding to 90 million passengers per annum.

Budget airline IndiGo will start operations from NMIA on December 25 and will have connections to 10 cities—Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mopa (in North Goa), Jaipur, Nagpur, Cochin and Mangalore.

Rival airline Akasa Air will also operate its maiden flight from Delhi to NMIA on December 25. Soon after, it will commence flights to Goa, Kochi and Ahmedabad from the NMIA.

“NMIA will serve as a key enabler in establishing a dual-airport ecosystem that enhances connectivity, reliability, and choice for travellers,” said Praveen Iyer, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Akasa Air.

The NMIA will help strengthen its strategic presence in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and western India, allowing it to optimise capacity deployment, he added.

Akasa will also scale up progressively, ramping up operations at NMIA to 300 domestic and 50 international weekly departures.

Tata-owned Air India had notified in September that its budget arm, Air India Express, would be operating 20 daily departures—or 40 Air Traffic Movements (ATMs)—from and to the NMIA, connecting 15 Indian cities.

The Air India group intends to scale up to 55 daily departures (or 110 ATMs) by mid-2026, including up to 5 daily international flights from NMIA, it had said. The airline is yet to announce specific dates of commencing operations.

The inauguration of the Navi Mumbai airport propels India’s financial capital into the league of major global cities like New York, London, Moscow and Tokyo that have multiple international airports.

The NMIA, located in the Raigad district near Panvel, in the east of South Mumbai, is about 35km from Mumbai’s existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), which is located in the heart of the city.

CSMIA has already hit its full capacity of 55 million, with hardly any space for expansion.

The state government has also started work on a new satellite city project called ‘Third Mumbai’ in the Raigad district. The airport will be key to enhancing connectivity in this region.