On December 25, 2025, Navi Mumbai International Airport opened for business. Despite early operational difficulties and delays in capacity development, airlines like IndiGo and Akasa Air intend to greatly expand their flights by February 2026.
The first commercial flight arrived on December 25, 2025, marking the start of operations at Navi Mumbai International Airport. On October 8 of this year, Prime Minister Modi officially opened the airport. The airport will significantly increase the capacity required for Mumbai, which lost its top spot in traffic to Delhi in 2008–09 due to Delhi's continuous growth and Mumbai's lack of land for expansion or the addition of a parallel runway.
Beginning in February 2026, NMIA will increase the number of scheduled daily departures from 23 to 34. On the first day of service, IndiGo, Akasa Air, and Air India Express will start operating out of NMIA.
The airport will only be open for 12 hours during the first month, from 0800 to 2000, handling up to 10 airplane movements per hour. After formally inducting the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) on October 29, 2025, NMIA is currently carrying out extensive Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT) testing.
As we get closer to operationalizing the much-needed capacity in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the tone is more subdued with scaled expansion. Earlier airline announcements appeared to be a big opening for NMIA.
At 8:00 am, IndiGo aircraft 6E460 from Bengaluru became the airport's first commercial arrival. It was greeted with a ceremonial water cannon salute. Soon after, NMIA's first arrival and departure cycle was completed when IndiGo flight 6E882 to Hyderabad took off at 8.40 am.
With 67 weekly frequencies, IndiGo would link NMIA to Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, North Goa (Mopa), Jaipur, Nagpur, Cochin, and Mangalore. This is a significant change from their May 2025 statement that it would begin with 18 daily departures to 15 destinations.
By the end of December, Akasa Air will start operating daily flights to Delhi and Goa-Mopa, followed by flights to Kochi and one weekly route to Ahmedabad. However, the airline intends to gradually increase operations from NMIA, reaching a weekly capacity of 300 domestic and 50 international flights. By the end of FY2027, the airline plans to ramp up to 10 parking sites as part of its larger network strategy, with a targeted international growth into important Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian markets. The plan differs significantly from the announcement. Akasa Air declared in June 2025 that it would start NMIA operations with over 100 weekly domestic flights.
Air India Express is starting operations at NMIA with daily flights to Bengaluru and five times a week to Delhi. In January, it will double the number of daily flights to Bengaluru and expand to twelve weekly flights to Delhi. The airline, which announced the NMIA operations last out of the three, said it will start out with 20 daily flights to 15 cities.
It's interesting to note that none of these locations are run by state-owned AAI; instead, they are all commercial airports or joint ventures. Since the airport was originally anticipated to begin operations in 2024, airlines have nothing to blame in this situation. Airlines are unable to modify their capacity to coincide with the delayed airport opening due to a supply chain shortage. The airport has also been battling challenges towards completion. While both NMIA and Jewar were initially announced to begin operations in 2024, NMIA has started operations, but there is no clarity on when Jewar will see commercial operations or even its inauguration.
What comes next?
In February 2026, the airport is anticipated to start operating around the clock, with 34 departures per day. The launch date of the foreign activities has not yet been announced. International flights require little operational preparation on the air side, but a great deal of preparation is required at the terminal, where Customs and Immigration services must be extensively tested.
The peak season is predicted to happen toward the end of this quarter, and Mumbai is likely to experience further growth in the summer of 2026, when NMIA would be available 24/7. This growth is expected to be justified by the season. Airlines can now plan more efficiently to add capacity at the appropriate moment thanks to this visibility.
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