‘Entire NMIA capacity is booked’

While the opening month of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) has been pushed again to August 2025, the airport authorities have managed to woo all three major airlines in India. But located more than 40-odd kms away from the city centre, will it be able to woo the passengers? Captain BVJK Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, NMIA, assures it will.

Hazel Jain

Captain BVJK Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), is in the hot seat as everyone trains their eyes on the new airport, spread over 1,160 acres. Will it be another jewel in Mumbai’s crown?

Sharma is already excited about the eyeballs his airport has received from airlines. “I have been interacting with all the three major Indian airlines. The demand is so high that my entire capacity is already booked. IndiGo has committed to 18 departures to more than 15 cities starting from day one of NMIA operations. Akasa Air has confirmed 15 departures, Air India and Air India Express both are in touch, but they want to ramp up to 90 domestic departures by March 2026. The exact numbers will be firmed up soon.” Discussions are on with other airlines as well.

The first phase of the airport is expected to open from August-end, though no launch date has been finalised yet. The pre-development work of the next phase of the airport involving a second terminal and an additional runway will begin from October 2026, revealed Sharma, adding that the aim is to model his airport after Changi.

“We have upped our total scale from 60 million passengers, revising it to 90 million passengers. In the launch phase, the airport will have a capacity to handle 20 million passengers annually. We will start with 8-10 air traffic movements per hour and then ramp up to 30 movements per hour by next April. The second terminal and the second runway are expected to be complete by 2029. We will adopt modular way of construction so that it does not impact the flight operations,” Sharma adds.

User development fee from passengers

Passengers flying out of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) will now have to pay a ‘User Development Fee (UDF)’ of `620 for domestic journeys and `1,225 for international journeys. For disembarking passengers, the UDF will be `270 and `525 for domestic and international flights, respectively. The UDF will be levied on an ad-hoc basis by the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA).