The Adani Group plans to demerge its airports division within the next 3 to 5 years, aiming to become India’s largest airport operator. 

With seven operational airports, Adani Airport Holdings, controlled by the group’s flagship company Adani Enterprises, is the second largest airport operator in the country after GMR Airports Infrastructure.  

The company is looking to grow its passenger handling capacity three-fold to 240-250 million over the coming years. It has further hinted at continued participation in the government’s airport privatisation drive.  

Jugeshinder ‘Robbie’ Singh, group chief financial officer, Adani Group said, “We will wait for the demerger of this business till it achieves the benchmarks we have set and that’s an event we have flagged between 3 and 5 years from now.”

These benchmarks include dependency on aeronautical (aero) revenues, which are mostly fixed in nature and boost income from non-aeronautical avenues. It is banking heavily on the city side projects, one of which is under development at the Navi Mumbai airport, to achieve this. The group is expecting 65% of the Ebitda to come from non-aero business.

The Navi Mumbai airport, with an estimated cost of Rs 19,600 crore, will be the eighth airport for the Adani Group. 

While Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, a few weeks ago, said that ‘a more realistic target’ date of having the first flight out of the Navi Mumbai airport will be March next year, Singh stuck to the group’s original deadline of December this year for its inauguration.

Further, it it working towards improving the overall passenger and non-passenger experience at the airports though it acknowledges that certain aspects like immigration and security are outside its control.

“Passengers and non-passengers, from 2026-27 onwards, will start noticing the material and marked changes at our airports. Business passengers will start seeing the change and services brought up to the global standards,” Singh added.

Phase 1 of the city side development is going on at 98 acres across five of the Adani airports. Adani Enterprises has lined up an additional capital expenditure (capex) of Rs 10,000 crore for the airports business in FY25. Most of this is expected to be routed to the upcoming Navi Mumbai airport.

“Our own (capex) plan for the airport will take our capacity to 250 million, 3X growth. As further privatization takes place that will add to the growth. As we look at the investment plan across the airports. We are of the opinion that we would be comfortably breaching and growing faster than India like we have done in the ports business,” Singh added.

 Following the completion of all phases, Navi Mumbai airport would be able to handle 90 million passengers and 2.6 million tonne of cargo per annum by 2031-32. Mumbai International Airport, which is also controlled by Adani Airports, has a capacity to handle 55 million passengers. Delhi airport, the country’s busiest, is set to handle 70 million passengers this year.  

Besides Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, Adani Airports controls airports at Thiruvananthapuram, Mangaluru, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Guwahati and Lucknow.