Navi Mumbai airport to begin operations on Dec 25 with 23 daily departures

Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) will start commercial flight operations from December 25 and initially, there will be 23 scheduled daily departures.

In the first month, the airport will operate for 12 hours between 8 am and 8 pm, handling 23 scheduled daily departures. During this period, the airport will manage up to 10 flight movements per hour, a release said on Monday.

The airport has been developed by Navi Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (NMIAL), a special purpose vehicle jointly owned by Adani Group and the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (CIDCO).

NMIA, the second main airport in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 8.

In the initial phase, the airport will handle around 120 air traffic movements daily.

From February 2026, the airport will transition to round-the-clock operations, expanding to 34 daily departures.

"The inaugural flight to arrive at NMIA will be IndiGo 6E460 from Bengaluru, scheduled to touchdown at 8:00 am. Shortly after, IndiGo 6E882 will depart for Hyderabad at 8:40 am, marking the first outbound service from the new airport.

"During the initial launch period, passengers will benefit from services operated by IndiGo, Air India Express, and Akasa Air, connecting Mumbai to 16 major domestic destinations," the release said.

The first phase of NMIA has been built at a cost of Rs 19,650 crore. Spread across 1,160 hectares, the airport will have one terminal and one runway in the first phase with an annual passenger handling capacity of 20 million.