Mumbai: Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) will play a major role in catering to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region's (MMR) increasing air travel demand of 150 million passengers per annum by 2030, said City and Industrial Development Corporation’s (CIDCO) newly-appointed vice chairman and managing director Ashwin Mudgal.
As operations gain momentum with active commercial flights, international routes picking up, and belly-cargo movement underway, city planning authority CIDCO is mapping out the multi-phased expansion needed to match western India's explosive aviation growth. Talking at FPJ Dialogue, the new CIDCO vice chairman shared his insights about the greenfield airport.
While the facility currently operates via a single runway and an initial terminal capacity of 20 million passengers per annum (MPPA), its ultimate target is set at 90 MPPA. Combined with the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) in Mumbai – which caps out around 50 MPPA – the dual-airport network forms the backbone of MMR's long-term infrastructure.
According to Mudgal, NMIA will play a crucial role in meeting the regional air travel demand as aviation remains the fastest-growing transit sector across Maharashtra and the country. He said that MMR’s air travel demand is set to hit 150 to 180 MPPA by 2030. “While Mumbai caters to 50 MPPA, NMIA will cater to the larger demand of 90 MPPA, once fully developed. Operationalisation of NMIA is a sign that we are going in the right direction,” Mudgal said.
State planners are looking beyond the Mumbai-Navi Mumbai twin system to proposed greenfield sites in Pune’s Purandar and Vadhavan in Palghar, which might become the country’s first off-shore airport, if approved.
"Now the airport is operational, international flights are getting momentum and cargo has also started. So it feels good. Right now it's 20 MPPA and has to be taken to 90 MPPA. Cargo is at 0.8 million metric tonnes and has to be taken over 3 million metric tonnes,” he added.
The CIDCO vice chairman stated that to achieve these targets, approximately 15 distinct development projects are concurrently active across the site. All the four planned phases will include construction of the second parallel runway, expansion of passenger terminal buildings, establishment of dedicated aircraft maintenance hangars and development of advanced freight processing zones.
A critical component of NMIA's master plan revolves around rapid transit connectivity between Navi Mumbai and Mumbai's primary airport. The former additional metropolitan commissioner at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) said that a dedicated metro link, Line-8 also called Golden line, is proposed to connect the airport to Sagar Sangam Station near the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) headquarters, linking to Belapur and further towards CSMIA via Mankhurd and Chheda Nagar.
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