In the early 2000s a very close friend of mine moved out of India for higher education. A resident of Chembur, his parents told him that the next time he visits post his graduation, he will land at Navi Mumbai airport. Luckily he visited once before graduation, but landed at the existing Mumbai airport and its old Terminal 2. This time around, he told his parents to come to the graduation ceremony and hopefully fly out of Navi Mumbai airport. One thing led to another and he settled in foreign land, married a local and has kids who have made multiple trips to Mumbai but the Navi Mumbai airport never came up.
Finally, in 2017 after multiple hurdles in tendering the bid was awarded to GVK group, also the operator of CSMIA, the existing Mumbai airport. If as much drama wasn’t enough, GVK moved out of the airports business by selling the Bengaluru airport to Fairfax, CSMIA to Adani group and subsequently also the Navi Mumbai Airport. Pre-general elections in 2024, announcements were made that the airport would be functional that year, only to be pushed repeatedly afterwards, with the new date being September 30. The airport will be inaugurated tomorrow by the Hon. Prime Minister, while actual operations will start in a few weeks time, with the date not yet announced.
With the same operator operating both airports at Mumbai, the question that will come up is how will the operations be split? An attempt to move all cargo operations out of existing CSMIA to Navi Mumbai met with resistance and the plan had to be canned. The plan was to be effective in August and it is an altogether different story that the new airport was not ready in August. CSMIA (MIAL) also has a plan of demolishing Terminal 1 and rebuilding it with better design, passenger handling and connectivity to Terminal 2. From the time when Navi Mumbai was planned to the date when it became operational, a lot has changed in the Indian skies. The growth of IndiGo, demise of Jet Airways and privatisation of Air India are the most notable. As the first commercial operations start a few weeks from now, there have been announcements from IndiGo, Akasa Air and Air India Express for starting operations from NMIA or D.B. Patil International Airport, NMIA. In its first phase the airport aims to handle up to 20 million passengers with an eventual capacity of 90 million with just two runways. For record, Dubai handled 92.3 million passengers last year with two runways. However, Dubai had widebody operations at a scale which would not be the case with NMIA.
The airline group split the ultimate solution?
I came across an interesting story in my travels to Russia on how the Soviet Union modelled its three airports in Moscow. With the airports in three different directions, the aim was to have flights flying in that direction to originate from respective airports to make it simple to understand. Transfer passengers clearly wasn’t on the agenda. Cut to 2025, India aims to be a transfer hub and the airport wants to correct the many wrongs of other airports like lack of seamless transfer between terminals. Is the ultimate solution then the split of full operations between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai on the lines of Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang in Bangkok, or New York and Newark in New York?
Mumbai has been in dire need of additional capacity for over a decade, having lost its pole position to Delhi in 2008-9. Delhi has since gone from strength to strength and has a capacity of 100 million passengers, three-fourths of which is already being catered to. As connectivity improves over the next three – five years, will it make sense for one airline group amongst either Air India or IndiGo to make a complete shift to NMIA, get a terminal (or two) for itself and handle passengers as a seamless operation? Indeed it will depend on how the partner airlines respond with quite a few Star Alliance members flying to Mumbai while quite a few partner airlines of IndiGo also flying to Mumbai.
The one airline, one airport concept would do wonders from a network perspective, if there is good connectivity to the new airport. This also helps to avoid any passenger confusion, seamless handling of IRROPS (Irregular Operations) and most importantly the scale.
Helicopter to Juhu?
Will a helicopter service between Navi Mumbai Airport and Juhu aerodrome work? There have been many attempts in the past across various cities to have helicopter services from city centre to the airport. In this case, it can well be between airport and airport. A set frequency service in addition to the road, rail, metro connectivity which is in the works, could indeed work in Mumbai. For an airport which intends to handle about 50,000 passengers a day, selling 5 seats each way every 30 minutes should not be a big challenge, one would feel.
Tail Note
A shift is unlikely to happen immediately, especially as IndiGo is in its infancy with respect to widebody operations. Air India is unlikely to let go of its legacy at Mumbai as well. The shift, if it happens, will happen only a good four or more years later when there is multi modal connectivity to NMIA, multiple terminals in operation with higher capacity and the traffic has stabilised.
Comment on how you think the operations should be split?
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