With the major hurdle of land acquisition resolved, and clearances from the state Cabinet in its bag, the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), the nodal authority for the project, is upbeat about executing the first phase of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) by mid-2021. Bhushan Gagrani, joint managing director, CIDCO, tells Fe pre-development work has begun for the airport that is to come up on 1,160 hectares. “We will be spending `2,000 crore on pre-development work in this financial year itself,” he says. This would entail flattening of a 90-m hillock, reclamation of marsh land and diversion of the Ulwe river. Billed as one of the world’s largest greenfield airports, the Navi Mumbai airport would have two parallel runways of 3,700 m and full-length taxiways 1,550 m apart, facilitating simultaneous operation of the airstrips. CIDCO has divided the pre-development work into four packages, with GVK and Gayatri Projects being awarded the contracts. Rajiv Reddy, vice-president, operations, Gayatri Projects, says the company expects to complete the pre-development work in about one and a half years’ time, adding, “we may complete it even earlier, depending on certain factors.”
Expressing confidence in meeting the deadlines, Gagrani says hurdles in the way of the project were removed after the state government rolled out a Rs 400-crore relief and rehabilitation (R&R) package for the about 3,500 families across ten villages who would be displaced. “None of the project affected persons (PAP) are opposed to the project. They have a few conditions and we will address their concerns satisfactorily.” Earlier, in February, 2017, the Mumbai International Airport (MIAL), which enjoyed the right of first refusal in case of a higher bid, won the right to build the greenfield airport, having offered 12.60% of revenue share to CIDCO, as against 10.44% offered by GMR.
On completion of the first phase, NMIA would be able to handle 10 million passengers yearly, a figure that would go up to 60 million once it attained full capacity. This is important given the situation at the existing Mumbai airport. According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), capacity utilisation at the Mumbai airport stood at 94% in the last fiscal, being expected to reach saturation point by March, 2018. The airport had a throughput of about 45.2 million passengers in FY17, which represented about 20% of all-India airport traffic.
Handling 837 flights a day on average, the Mumbai airport also became the world’s busiest single-runway facility in fiscal 2017, overtaking London’s Gatwick airport. No other large city in the world is served by just one airport, that too with a single-runway. Even in India, the New Delhi airport has three parallel runways in use at any given time. This state of affairs would change once the NMIA project is completed, with the two airports in the Greater Mumbai region being able to handle 108 million passengers a year. To cash in on the prospects raised by the project, CIDCO has drawn up ambitious plans for Navi Mumbai, Mumbai’s satellite city. With an eye on investments, a corporate park is proposed to be developed at Kharghar, on the lines of the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC). Gagrani says,
“By mid-2021, infrastructure within the park should be ready, along with the first runway at NMIA.” In four-five years, the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL), too, is expected to be operational, reducing the time taken to travel between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai to 20-30 minutes from at least 75 minutes now.