The Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) will begin commercial operations a month from now on December 25, 2025. The airport was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi on October 08 this year. The launch will add a significant boost to the capacity needed for Mumbai, which lost its numero uno position in traffic to Delhi in 2008-9, as Delhi kept expanding and Mumbai not having enough land to expand or add a parallel runway.
NMIA will start with 23 scheduled daily departures, scaling up to 34 departures from February 2026. IndiGo, Akasa Air and Air India Express had announced that they would start operations from NMIA from the first day of operations. While they have kept their word, the actual operations are a shadow of what was announced.
In the first month, the airport will operate only for 12 hours, between 0800 hours and 2000 hours, managing up to 10 flight movements per hour. Currently, NMIA is conducting comprehensive Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT) trials, having formally inducted the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) on October 29, 2025.
Earlier announcements made by airlines looked like a grand opening for NMIA, but it looks more muted with a scaled growth as we get closer to operationalisation of the much needed capacity in Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
Who will land first?
The inaugural flight to arrive at NMIA will be IndiGo flight 6E460 from Bengaluru, scheduled for a touchdown at 0800 am. The first flight to depart from NMIA will be IndiGo flight 6E882 to Hyderabad, which is scheduled to depart at 0840 hours. IndiGo will connect NMIA to Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, North Goa (Mopa), Jaipur, Nagpur, Cochin, and Mangalore, offering 67 weekly frequencies, a far cry from its earlier announcement of starting with 18 daily departures to 15 destinations which it had made in May 2025. The airline had announced that it would scale up to 79 daily departures including 14 international ones by November 2025, the airport is getting operational only towards the end of December. The airline will add flights to Chennai and Coimbatore effective December 29 and to Vadodara from December 30.
Akasa Air will start operations with daily flights to Delhi and Goa – Mopa, followed by flights to Kochi and a sole weekly to Ahmedabad towards the end of December. The airline however plans to progressively ramp up operations from NMIA, scaling up to 300 domestic and 50 international weekly departures. As part of its broader network strategy, the airline is also set to ramp up to 10 parking bases by the end of FY2027, with a focused international expansion into key Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian markets. The plan is remarkably different than what it had announced. In June 2025, Akasa Air had announced that it would commence NMIA operations with 100+ weekly domestic departures.
Air India Express is starting operations at NMIA with Daily flights to Bengaluru, and five times a week to Delhi, scaling it up to 12x weekly to Delhi and double daily to Bengaluru in January. The airline, which was the last of the three to announce the NMIA operations, had said that it would start with 20 daily departures to 15 cities.
Interestingly, these destinations are all private airports or Joint Ventures with none being operated by state owned AAI. Airlines have little to blame in this case since the airport was initially expected to start operations in 2024. With a supply chain crunch, airlines cannot time the capacity to opening of the airport which is delayed. The airport too has been battling challenges towards completion and while both NMIA and NIA, Jewar were initially announced to begin operations in 2024, while NMIA starts operations, there is no clarity on when Jewar would see commercial operations or even inauguration.
What next?
The airport is expected to transition to round-the-clock operations from February 2026 when the airport expects 34 daily departures. There is no word yet on when the international operations will start. While operationally on the air side, international flights will not need much preparation; a lot needs to be put in place in the terminal where Customs, Immigration services need to be tested thoroughly.
The peak season is towards the end for this quarter, and the additional growth for Mumbai will happen in Summer 2026 when NMIA will be available round the clock and the season will justify additional growth. With such visibility, airlines can now plan better so as to induct capacity at the right time.
