Air India Group has told aviation regulator Aera in a formal letter that airlines may not be inclined to shift operations from Mumbai’s existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport to the newly inaugurated Navi Mumbai International Airport, citing higher tariffs, inadequate road and Metro connectivity, and increased costs arising from split operations across two airports. The pushback, contained in an April 16 letter to the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India reviewed by Business Standard, directly challenges the assumptions underlying NMIA’s tariff planning for the 2025-2030 period.
What Air India’s Letter Said
Air India Group told Aera that it “respectfully disagrees with the assumption of strong airline demand to shift operations to NMIA” — a direct and formal repudiation of the demand projections that underpin the airport’s commercial case for the current tariff consultation period. The airline’s position, as reported by Business Standard citing the reviewed letter, rests on three specific objections.
The first is tariff levels. NMIA’s aeronautical charges — aircraft landing fees, parking charges and related costs — are higher than those at the existing Mumbai airport, making a shift financially unattractive for airlines without a corresponding commercial benefit from higher passenger volumes or superior operations.
The second is connectivity. Road and Metro connectivity to NMIA is inadequate at this stage of development — a critical concern for an airline whose passengers making connections or travelling to Navi Mumbai’s airport need reasonable, reliable surface transport options. Without the Metro links and highway access that would make NMIA genuinely convenient for passengers, airlines face the commercial risk of operating from an airport that passengers will actively try to avoid booking.
The third is the operational cost of split operations. If Air India operates flights from both CSMIA and NMIA simultaneously — dividing its Mumbai hub across two locations — it incurs duplication of ground handling, crew positioning, maintenance and administrative costs that a single concentrated hub does not generate. The economics of split operations rarely favour airlines in the early years of a secondary airport’s ramp-up.
The Adani Angle
Both Mumbai airports — CSMIA and NMIA — are operated by the Adani Group. Aera is consulting aviation stakeholders specifically to determine aeronautical tariffs for NMIA for the 2025-2030 regulatory period, meaning the regulator is in the process of setting the charges that will apply to airlines using the new airport for the next five years.
Air India’s formal letter of objection to the regulator, rather than a bilateral commercial negotiation with the airport operator, is the procedurally correct way to make its concerns part of the official tariff-setting record. Whatever tariff Aera eventually determines for NMIA must account for the airline demand assumptions it is using — and if the largest Indian carrier by seat capacity is formally stating that strong demand to shift to NMIA is not a realistic assumption, Aera’s tariff decision must engage with that position.
The dynamic between India’s national carrier and an airport operator owned by one of the country’s largest conglomerates — playing out through a regulatory tariff consultation — is precisely the kind of arms-length commercial dispute that Aera exists to adjudicate.
What It Means for NMIA’s Commercial Ramp-Up
Navi Mumbai International Airport’s commercial case depends critically on traffic ramp-up. Airports at this scale — designed to relieve the congestion at one of Asia’s busiest airports in CSMIA — require airlines to commit capacity, build passenger awareness and generate the route density that makes the hub commercially self-sustaining. If Air India, which operates the majority of domestic departures and a significant share of international capacity from Mumbai, declines to shift operations, NMIA’s traffic growth will be significantly slower than its infrastructure investment and tariff projections assume.
The connectivity concern is the most actionable of Air India’s three objections — Metro and road links to NMIA are infrastructure investments that will be completed over time, and their completion would remove the primary passenger convenience objection to the airport. But the tariff and split-operations cost concerns are structural and require either regulatory intervention on charges or a fundamental reconsideration of how operations are allocated between the two Mumbai airports.
Aera’s tariff determination for the 2025-2030 period will be the first formal test of whether the regulator sides with the airport operator’s traffic assumptions or with the airlines’ stated reluctance to shift.
Disclaimer: This article is based on Business Standard’s reporting on the Air India letter to Aera. It is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.