Jyotiraditya Scindia, the union minister of civil aviation, directed CIDCO to expedite the process of connecting roads to the airport during her Saturday visit to the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) site. NMIA is slated to open as the nation's first airport with multimodal access via road, rail, and metro.
But it appears like the cutoff point for business operations was altered overnight. During a news conference in Nagpur yesterday, the minister had stated that the airport will be completed by December 31, 2024; but, as of today, the deadline has been extended to March 31, 2025. When inquired as to why, Scindia responded, “It is true that the end of December 2024 was the target we were pushing for. Internally, we are still targeting it. But one is an overambitious projection which cannot be met and the other is a realistic one with a surprise in its cache if it is completed before time. I believe in the latter, and hence I have kept that cushion of three months with the hope that we can do it earlier.”
After conducting a thorough site tour, Scindia held a progress review meeting to discuss the project's state and operational preparedness. At the review meeting, senior representatives from CIDCO, Adani Airport Holding Limited (AAHL), and the Maharashtra government were present in addition to officials from the aviation ministry.
The minister said that the ₹18,000-crore project, which started in March 2018, will be done in five phases and would greatly improve Mumbai's connectivity. Two crore passengers can be accommodated on a single runway, one terminal, and during the first and second stages, which will start concurrently. Phases 3, 4, and 5 will include the construction of the second runway, four terminals, and an enhanced passenger capacity of nine crore. There will be three routes via which the airport is connected to the road: NH 4B (348), the Sion-Panvel Highway, and MTHL. The railway link will be through Targhar railway station, and metro connections will be by metro line 2D (DN Nagar to Mandale-Mankhurd), metro line 8 (Mumbai Airport to Navi Mumbai Airport) and the Navi Mumbai-Pendhar-Belapur-Taloja metro line.