Mumbai, October 20: Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL), which operates both the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) in Mumbai as well as the new Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) in Navi Mumbai, has been up in arms with airlines over shifting operations to the latter following renovations for Terminal 1 at CSMIA. AAHL has directed airlines to shift almost one third of international departures to NMIA as Terminal 1 will be renovated until 2030.
This capacity rebalancing involves demolition and phased reconstruction of Terminal 1B of the airport, which currently handles about 5 million passengers annually, with domestic flights being temporarily migrated to Terminal 2.
To free up gate and airside capacity at T2, about 265 weekly international departures will be needed to move to NMIA, impacting both domestic carriers like IndiGo, Air India as well as foreign airlines like Emirates, Air France-KLM and Etihad Airways.
The airlines have resisted the move, saying that their winter schedules are already planned for heavy traffic. Besides, splitting international flights across two airports nearly 50 km apart would double their costs for ground handling and involve challenges with aircraft rotations, crew rostering and regulatory permissions, and demand for the new location and poor last mile connectivity remain concerns.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), representing international airlines, has also raised objections over the move, even as Adani defends its stance saying that the capacity reduction is necessary to complete long-overdue infrastructure modernization at the Mumbai airport. The issue has reached the Civil Aviation ministry, the forced attempt is threatening to snowball into a diplomatic issue, and a potential boycott by global airlines. AAHL has promised to restore the affected airlines’ slot rights at CSMIA after the reconstructed terminal becomes fully operational in 2029-30.
