In most parts of the world, the commissioning of a city’s second airport means more flight options and better connectivity. But when the first airline flight lifts off from Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) sometime in Dec after a ceremonial inauguration on Oct 8, it will signal a change of status for Mumbai. India’s financial capital will no longer share the dubious distinction — with Bangladesh capital Dhaka — of being the only two cities in the world’s top 10 most populated urban agglomerations to be served by a single airport, operating out of a single runway.All the other behemoths in that category — Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai, Beijing, Delhi, Cairo, Mexico City and Sao Paulo — either have airports with parallel runways or are served by secondary airports.While Delhi-NCR, too, will have a secondary airport this year, the trajectory of these two new airports would be markedly different. Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport will remain the main airport for the Delhi-NCR region, with Noida-Jewar airport playing the role of the smaller, secondary airport. It will eventually overtake Delhi airport, though not anytime soon.But that is not the case with Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA). Mumbai airport is so congested that it has no room for growth; it’s expected that the new Navi Mumbai airport will overtake it within a decade, handling way more passengers.
Flying ahead after slow start
Navi Mumbai will start off slow, with one runway and a terminal building that can handle 20 million passengers a year. Currently, Mumbai airport handles 55 million passengers per year, operating just on a single runway.Mumbai is clearly the main airport of MMR (Mumbai Metropolitan Region). But the rising demand for air travel out of Mumbai has not been met with a corresponding increase in supply of airline seats. The airport has not grown since 2018, and it still handles roughly the same number of flights. The Navi Mumbai airport is expected to take up the slack caused by the older airport’s stifled growth.
According to a top official of Adani Airport Holdings Ltd, the parent company of Navi Mumbai and Mumbai airports, the new airport’s Terminal 1 is set to be saturated within a year of its opening, making it the shortest ever saturation timeline for an airport.Terminal 2 of Navi Mumbai airport is expected to be commissioned in 2029, with a capacity to handle 30 million passengers a year. So, it’s expected that the two airports — the old and new — would be neck and neck around 2030, each handling 50-60 million passengers a year.But the bigger change will happen in the 2030s. Mumbai airport will remain constrained, but Navi Mumbai airport will continue to grow. Navi Mumbai’s Terminal 3, expected to come up in 2032, will have a capacity of 20 million passengers per year and Terminal 4, which will come up in 2036, will have a capacity of another 20 million, which means a total of 90 million passengers a year.It’s safe to assume that it things go according to plan, Navi Mumbai will become MMR’s main airport and Mumbai airport, with an about 60 million passenger handling capacity, will be relegated to ‘secondary airport’ status.By 2035-2040, India’s top three busiest airports would be Delhi-IGI (which is set to increase its capacity to 100 million passengers per year), Navi Mumbai airport, and Noida-Jewar, which is expected to handle 70 million passengers a year. If we travel further into the future, Noida-Jewar — with its six runways and 225 million passenger handling capacity — will be India’s top gun. Bengaluru airport, with its parallel runway, will surpass Mumbai-CSMIA.
Need for secondary airports
Most of the big cities of the world are served by multiple airports. New York has John F Kennedy as its main airport, with Newark Liberty and LaGuardia functioning as secondary ones. London’s Heathrow is its busiest airport, even as Gatwick, Stansted and Luton serve as secondary airports. Paris has Charles de Gaulle as its main airport, while Orly and Beauvais Tille are its secondary airports.But for over eight decades now, the Mumbai airport — with passenger terminals at Sahar, Vile Parle and Santacruz — has been the only air travel gateway to the 24 million people of Mumbai and its pre-urban area that make up MMR.In the world of airports and runways, the top rank is held by parallel runways, as these allow simultaneous operations. Mumbai airport, too, has two runways, but they don’t run parallel; they intersect each other in such a way that both runways cannot be used simultaneously at full capacity. Thus, only one runway can be kept operational at any point of time at Mumbai airport.All flights bound for Mumbai — domestic/international airline flights, charter flights, cargo flights and VVIP flights — land on this single runway, mostly Main Runway 27. Irrespective of their airport of origin, all planes coming in to land at this runway fly in from the east, overflying the Ghatkopar-Vikhroli area, for touchdown and take-off, while planes lift off and fly west, cutting through the Juhu beach into the Arabian sea.When pilots announce that your arrival is delayed because of air traffic congestion at Mumbai, what they mean is that the 11,300ft-long asphalt that makes runway 27 of Mumbai airport is working beyond capacity.“Runway capacity is the maximum number of take-offs and landings a runway can safely handle in an hour,” said a senior air traffic controller. “The declared capacity of Mumbai runway 27 is 46-44 flights per hour. But there have been times when the Mumbai air traffic control has handled about 54 flights in 60 minutes on runway 27,” he added.Flight movements are not evenly spaced out, with most flights bunched during the morning and evening peak hours, when the Mumbai runway works beyond its capacity. Currently, Mumbai airport handles an average of 950 flights per day. The 24 hours are packed, especially the peak hours. On Nov 11, 2023, the airport handled 1,032 flights in 24 hours, a record.None of this will change when Navi Mumbai airport starts functioning. Mumbai airport will not be decongested, airlines will not move flights to the new airport. The Navi Mumbai airport will only accommodate the growth that Mumbai airport couldn’t handle. Mumbai airport was India’s busiest airport till 2008. Hemmed in by slums, it could not afford a second parallel runway, and Delhi overtook it to take top slot. Go to Source
