With the Christmas cheer descending on Mumbai, the long wait of the financial capital and its people is set to end on Thursday as the first flight lands in the region’s brand new international airport.
The Navi Mumbai International Airport, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October, will begin operations from December 25. On the first day of operations, 30 air traffic movements (arrivals and departures) are expected from the new airport, which is situated in the Panvel taluka, Raigad district.
As the first flight touches down at 8am on Thursday, Mumbai will become the first city in India to have two operational airports. Mumbai will now be in the league of other megacities in the world like London, New York, Tokyo and Moscow that have had two or more airports.
For decades, Mumbai has had only one airport – the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport – located in the heart of the city near the western suburb of Andheri. Amid growing population and an ever-expanding city, there has been a long demand for a new airport. CSMIA doesn’t have any space to expand, and it also constrained airlines from adding more flights to and from the city.
NMIA will address these issues. In its initial phase, NMIA will have one operational terminal and runway, with capacity to handle 20 million passengers and 0.30 million tonnes of cargo a year. The airport will continue to grow over the next 15 years, and eventually, will have four terminals and two runways with a cumulative 90 million passengers and 2.6 million tonnes of cargo handling capacity.
Flights of major carriers, including Indigo, Air India Express, Akasa and Star Air are expected to arrive and depart from NMIA on the first day.
IndiGo had announced earlier that it would have connections to 10 cities—Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mopa (in North Goa), Jaipur, Nagpur, Cochin and Mangalore from NMIA. Akasa Air will commence flights to Goa, Kochi, Delhi and Ahmedabad from the airport. Air India Express, the Tata’s owned budget carrier, too has announced flights to various cities from NMIA.
On Tuesday, Vijay Singhal, the vice-chairman and MD of CIDCO (City and Industrial Development Corporation), conducted a final inspection of NMIA to ensure things were in place for the operations to begin. CIDCO has been the implementing agency for the ambitious project.
The airport will ease airport connectivity for people in Navi Mumbai, Pune and Raigad district and is also expected to give a major economic boost to the region. NMIA will also be just under an hour away from the island city of Mumbai via the Atal Setu.
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The state government, as well as CIDCO, have planned multiple infrastructure projects to enhance connectivity to the airport. This will include an elevated corridor from the city of Thane to NMIA, and a metro rail connection between the existing and new airport.
The new airport will be a centrepiece of an ambitious new mega city project – Third Mumbai – which CIDCO is developing. “Naina (Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area) City is spread over an area of 245sq km, and we are developing it in phases spread over an area of 245sq km, which has 95 villages in the notified area,” Singhal told THE WEEK recently. Some ₹8,000 crore worth of tenders have already been awarded for various road works in the region, he noted.