Navi Mumbai Airport Opened. But This One Flight Caught My Eye.

Navi Mumbai has an airport now. Finally.

I'm from Thane, so this is kind of a big deal for me. Thane sits right between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, both airports are roughly the same distance from my place. After years of crawling through traffic to reach BOM, having a second option feels like a relief.

Why Mumbai Needed This

If you've flown out of Mumbai regularly, you know how packed it gets. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport has been running at almost full capacity for years. Airlines have wanted to add more flights, more routes, but there's no space. I always felt Mumbai was held back not because people didn't want to fly, but because the airport couldn't handle more.

NMIA is supposed to fix that. Whether it actually does, we'll see.

The airport opened on December 25, 2025. IndiGo, Air India Express, Akasa Air, Star Air, all started operations on Day 1. First flight was IndiGo 6E460 from Bengaluru, landed at 8am with a water cannon salute. About 4,000 passengers came through by end of day.

Gautam Adani was there. Suryakumar Yadav showed up. Flag hoisting, speeches, all of that happened.

But that's not what I'm writing about.

The Part That Actually Got Me

So there was this Air India Express flight - IX556, a 737 MAX 8 - that took off from NMIA around 10:57am. It didn't go anywhere. Flew over the Arabian Sea for about 40 minutes at 14,000 feet and came back.

Who was on it? The people who built the airport. Construction workers. Helpers. And the villagers who had to give up their land so this whole thing could be built.

Around 2,786 families from villages like Targhar, Pargaon, Ulwe, Kolhi were displaced for NMIA. They got compensation, got relocated. But let's be real - in the big picture of airport openings and ribbon cuttings, nobody really talks about them.

On Day 1, someone thought of them. A charter was booked, possibly by NMIA or Adani, I'm not entirely sure, specifically for these folks. 40 minutes in the air. The people who made the airport possible, experiencing it for the first time.

If anyone knows who actually arranged this, let me know in the comments. Would love to find out.

On Adani Running Both Airports

Both Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airports are now under Adani. I wonder sometimes if it would've been better to have different operators, competition usually pushes everyone to do better. But I'm not an expert on airport operations, so maybe there's a reason this makes more sense. If you know how this usually works, drop a comment.

What's Next

The plan is to gradually shift all domestic flights from Mumbai's T1 to Navi Mumbai. Once that happens, T1 might get revamped, maybe merged with T2, or rebuilt entirely. I'm not 100% sure on the specifics, but that seems to be the direction.

And hopefully, international flights from NMIA aren't too far behind.

For now, NMIA is starting with domestic routes, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Goa. It's early days. Whether it actually takes pressure off Mumbai remains to be seen.

But I'm glad it's open. And glad someone thought to put those workers and villagers on a flight.