While the first and second phase of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), which includes the development of Terminal 1 and a runway, and will be inaugurated in September this year, has been built at a capital investment of Rs 20,000 crore, the Adani Group will incur an investment of an additional Rs 30,000 crore in the third phase, which will see the development of Terminal 2 by 2029, said a senior official of Adani Airport Holdings Ltd (AAHL).
In the initial phase, the upcoming greenfield facility will be equipped to cater to 20 million passengers per annum (MPPA). In the first phase, a cargo terminal is also coming up, which is likely to be operational in 2026. Once the third phase is completed, the airport will have the capacity to handle 50 million passengers per annum.
Having incurred Rs 20,000 crore in phase one and two of the airport, the company has also created the enabling work for the construction of phase three of the airport, AAHL Chief Financial Officer (Airport Business) Arun Bansal said. The third phase will include construction of a second terminal along with a second runway.
The company hopes to align the groundbreaking ceremony for the third phase of the airport with the inauguration of the first two phases, which is expected to take place by the end of next month, he said.
“As of now the designing of phase three is on and we believe it (phase three) will be a Rs 30,000-crore project. Besides Terminal 2 and a second runway, it will also will include APMs (automated people movers) and Metro works,” Bansal said.
The construction work for phase three will begin in the next six-nine months, and will be completed in three-and-half years, he said.
Once all five phases of the mega airport project are completed, the second airport in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region will have a capacity to handle 90 million passengers per annum with two runways and four terminals, as per Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd (NMIAL).
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NMIAL is the special purpose vehicle set up to develop and operate the greenfield international airport in Navi Mumbai, with Adani Group holding 74 per cent equity and City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) holding the remaining 26 per cent stake in the entity.
Bansal said the airport is likely to get the aerodrome licence by the end of this month, which will pave the way for the facility to start operations. “We filed our application long back. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has already done the inspection around 15-20 days back. They will come back once again. So, we are expecting to get the licence by the end of this month,” he said.
Recently, two airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air announced a tie-up with Adani Airport Holdings to operate flights from Navi Mumbai airport once commercial operations start. The company is in the advanced stages of discussion with other domestic and international carriers to start their flight operations from the airport, Bansal said.
Besides the upcoming Navi Mumbai airport, Adani Group is also the owner and operator of the existing Mumbai International Airport in a 74:26 partnership with the Airports Authority of India.
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When asked about the timeline for the complete closure of T1 (Terminal 1) of Mumbai airport, Bansal said it will coincide with the opening of Terminal 2 at Navi Mumbai airport, which is expected to take place around mid-2029.
A part of T1, he said, is already closed due to structural issues.
Mumbai International Airport has two terminals, T1 and T2, with a single crossing runway. T1 caters to domestic passengers while T2 handles both domestic and international passengers.
The new airport in Navi Mumbai will decongest the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. Last December, the new airport’s runway was tested for handling commercial flights with an IndiGo aircraft landing successfully on runway 26/08.
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A month before that the private airport operator along with the AAI successfully conducted the flight calibration of the airport’s Instrument Landing System (ILS). In October 2024, an Indian Air Force plane did a test landing on one of its runways.
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