October 01, 2025: The Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), delayed by over a year, could see its first phase reach full capacity in the very first year of operations. Based on current airline announcements, passenger traffic is projected to touch 16.4 lakh per month, the designed monthly capacity of the airport’s Phase 1.
Planned to handle 20 million passengers annually, NMIA’s capacity translates into about 1.6 million passengers per month. With IndiGo, Akasa Air, and Air India Express announcing aggressive expansion plans, the combined traffic projections already match the first phase’s limit.
IndiGo, India’s largest airline, was the first to outline operations from NMIA, starting with 18 daily departures and planning to scale to 79 by November 2025, including 14 international routes. It aims for 140 daily departures by Winter 2026, potentially offering nearly 15,000 daily seats.
Akasa Air followed in June 2025, declaring over 100 weekly domestic departures at launch, scaling up to 350+ weekly flights, including 50 international ones, by winter. This amounts to around 50 daily departures, translating to more than 65,000 weekly seats.
Air India Express, the low-cost subsidiary of Air India, will also begin with 20 daily departures, scaling up to 55 by mid-2026 and 60 by winter 2026, adding over 71,000 weekly seats.
Together, these three carriers could provide more than 10.25 lakh departure seats monthly, which doubles to 20.5 lakh when arrivals are included. At a conservative 80% load factor, this equals 16.4 lakh passengers per month — fully utilizing NMIA’s first-phase capacity.
While high demand signals strong business potential, it also raises challenges for timely expansion, as the construction pace is difficult to accelerate. With Mumbai’s existing airport long constrained by capacity, the Navi Mumbai facility may find itself operating at peak levels from the start.
Source: Mint
