Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) will begin commercial operations in a month, December 25, 2025. The airport was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi on October 8 this year. The launch will significantly increase the capacity needed for Mumbai, which lost its numero uno position in traffic to Delhi in 2008-9 as Delhi continued to expand and Mumbai did not have enough land to expand or add a parallel track.
NMIA will start with 23 scheduled daily departures and increase to 34 departures from February 2026. IndiGo, Akasa Air and Air India Express have announced to start operations from NMIA from the first day of operations. Even if they kept their word, the actual operations are a shadow of what was announced.
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In the first month, the airport will only be open for 12 hours, from 8:00 a.m. to 2,000 p.m., handling up to 10 flights per hour. The NMIA is currently conducting comprehensive Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT) tests, after formally inducting the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) on 29 October 2025.
Earlier airline announcements looked like a grand opening for NMIA, but it looks more muted with scaled-down growth as we move closer to operating much-needed capacity in the Mumbai metropolitan area.
Who will land first?
The inaugural flight to NMIA will be IndiGo flight 6E460 from Bengaluru, scheduled to land at 08:00. The first flight to depart from NMIA will be IndiGo flight 6E882 to Hyderabad scheduled to depart at 8:40 AM. IndiGo will connect NMIA to Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, North Goa (Mopa), Jaipur, Nagpur, Cochin and Mangalore, and will offer 67 weekly frequencies, a far cry from its earlier announcement of starting with 18 daily departures to 15 destinations in May 2025.
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The airline has announced that it will increase to 79 daily departures by November 2025, including 14 international ones, the airport will not be operational until the end of December. The airline will add flights to Chennai and Coimbatore with effect from December 29 and to Vadodara from December 30.
Akasa Air will begin operations with daily flights to Delhi and Goa – Mopa, followed by flights to Kochi and a single weekly flight to Ahmedabad in late December. However, the airline plans to gradually increase traffic from NMIA to up to 300 domestic and 50 international departures per week. As part of its broader network strategy, the airline is also set to add up to 10 parking bases by the end of fiscal 2027, with a focus on international expansion into key markets in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The plan is significantly different from what was announced. In June 2025, Akasa Air announced that it would begin operating NMIA with more than 100 domestic departures per week.
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Air India Express is starting operations at NMIA with daily flights to Bengaluru and five times a week to Delhi, expanding to 12 times a week to Delhi and twice a day to Bengaluru in January. The airline, the latest of the three to announce NMIA operations, said it would start with 20 daily departures to 15 cities.
Interestingly, all these destinations are private airports or joint ventures, none of which are operated by the state-owned AAI. The airlines have little to blame for this, as the airport was originally expected to open in 2024. Due to the supply chain crisis, the airlines cannot time the capacity until the airport opens, which is delayed. The airport has also faced challenges to completion, and while both NMIA and NIA, Jewar was originally announced to begin operations in 2024, while NMIA will begin operations, it is unclear when Jewar will see commercial operations or even an inauguration.
what next
The airport is expected to switch to non-stop operations from February 2026, when the airport expects 34 departures per day. It is not yet known when international operations will begin. While operational on the air side, international flights will not require much preparation; much needs to be introduced to the terminal where customs and immigration services need to be thoroughly tested.
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The peak season is nearing the end of this quarter and further growth for Mumbai will occur in the summer of 2026 when NMIA will be available 24/7 and the season will justify further growth. With this visibility, airlines can now plan better to deploy capacity at the right time.
