India’s Jewar and Navi Mumbai airports face October launch dates

Indian Opinion Analysis

India's airport expansion targets a structural gap: Delhi and Mumbai together handle roughly a third of the country's air traffic, but both have run out of runway slots. The Jewar airport, formally the Noida International Airport, and the Navi Mumbai project have been in planning for over a decade. Jewar alone is designed for 12 million passengers a year initially, rising to 70 million in later phases. If both open on schedule, India will have two new greenfield airports operational within weeks of each other for the first time since the Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports were commissioned in 2008. The real test will be how quickly ground connectivity, roads and metro rail to both sites, keeps pace with terminal capacity. Passenger movement at the Delhi airport hit nearly 66 lakh last fiscal year, Jewar's success depends on whether flyers accept an extra hour of travel time.