The airline will get the benefit of prime slots at Navi Mumbai airport. Also, the cost of moving the entire base from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai is not high.
Adani Group
Billionaire Gautam Adani-controlled Adani Group is actively considering a 200 percent growth in the commercial area in the airport, constructing multiplexes and Legoland theme parks in the city side. More importantly, it plans to shift one of the big airlines to Navi Mumbai airport in an earnest bid to decongest Mumbai airport and increase revenue from its 8 airports.
At present, Adani Airport Holdings (AAHL), a group company of the ports-to-power conglomerate, manages airports in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati, and Thiruvananthapuram.
Navi Mumbai airport
Also, it is developing Navi Mumbai airport, which will likely be operational by 2024. Citing people familiar with the development, Business Standard reported that Adani Group officials gave 2 presentations on the airport plans to potential investors last week.
Mumbai airport is the 2nd busiest airport in the country and there is further no scope for capacity expansion beyond six crore passengers per year as it is in the heart of the city, the financial daily, mentioned, citing one of the presentations. This means that there is effectively no new slot available for airlines at Mumbai airport.
The Adani Group presentation mentioned that the Mumbai airport had 2 major airlines with domestic and international airlines—IndiGo and Air India. One of these airlines may be shifted to Navi Mumbai International Airport so that the load on Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) can be reduced.
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The airline will get the benefit of prime slots at Navi Mumbai airport. Also, moving the entire base from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai is not high because shifting just spillover will result in an additional initial setup cost to the airline.
- Currently, Mumbai airport works 2,573 weekly flights, of which 919 are IndiGo and 390 Air India flights. Vistara and Go First are at number 3 and 4 with 364 and 243 flights, respectively, as per data from aviation analyst firm Sirium.
In the 2nd presentation, the group mentioned that it is preparing to increase passenger capacity from 3.1 crores to 7.5 crores at the seven operational airports by 2027. Further, in the 1st phase, the Navi Mumbai airport will be operational by December 2024 and will have a capacity of two crore passengers.
The Ahmedabad-based conglomerate wants to shift focus to “underserved” international routes, raise the share of wide-body aircraft at its airports, and woo airlines with monetary and non-monetary benefits. It also plans to develop Mumbai airport as a transit hub on the lines of Dubai airport.
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