Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s proposal to develop Terminal 1B before demolishing Terminal 1A has brought Mumbai airport’s central infrastructure problem into focus: the city needs to rebuild an ageing terminal without losing the capacity and connectivity that its existing airport system currently provides. The dispute is not only about where flights should operate. It is about whether redevelopment can be sequenced around a live, tightly interconnected airport rather than treated as a single construction project.
Fadnavis has opposed the proposed transfer of flights to 14 international destinations from Mumbai airport to Navi Mumbai International Airport from next summer. He has written to the civil aviation minister suggesting that Terminal 1B should be developed first, operations should then move from Terminal 1A to Terminal 1B, and only after that should Terminal 1A be demolished. In his words, the sequence would be to “first develop Terminal 1B, shift 1A to 1B and then take down the existing 1A terminal”.
The proposal is significant because it attempts to retain operations during redevelopment. The existing plan described in the report involves demolishing the entire 15-million-passenger-per-annum Terminal 1 by March 2028, with reconstruction beginning thereafter. The new terminal is expected to be ready by December 2030. That sequence would create a capacity gap lasting three years or more, according to airline sources cited in the report, unless traffic is accommodated elsewhere.
Mumbai airport’s operator, Mumbai International Airport Ltd, has told airlines that it cannot accommodate their requested slots for the Summer 2027 schedule. It has proposed reducing international operations at Terminal 2 by a third from the end of March 2027 to make room for 5 million passengers per annum of domestic traffic displaced during the first phase of Terminal 1 demolition. This would not simply be a terminal-level adjustment. It would alter how domestic and international passengers, airlines, aircraft stands and ground connections are managed across the airport.
Adani Airport Holdings Ltd has separately informed the civil aviation ministry that flights connecting Mumbai with 14 international destinations could be shifted to Navi Mumbai from next summer. The destinations listed are Bahrain, Dammam, Dhaka, Doha, Fujairah, Jakarta, Jeddah, Kathmandu, Kuwait City, Madinah, Muscat, Ras Al Khaimah, Riyadh and Sharjah. Fadnavis’s opposition means that the proposed relocation has become a question of state-level political and administrative coordination, rather than an operational decision by the airport operator alone.
The disagreement also reflects the different time horizons of airport redevelopment. For the operator, moving flights can create the operating space required to take down and rebuild an existing terminal. For airlines and passengers, the same move can mean new transfer patterns, altered ground access and uncertainty over the continuity of established international services. The International Air Transport Association has urged the civil aviation ministry to adopt a phased redevelopment strategy in which sections of Terminal 1 are demolished and reconstructed sequentially, avoiding a wholesale loss of capacity.
That argument is rooted in the physical configuration of Terminal 1. According to an airline source cited in the report, Terminal 1A, Terminal 1B and Terminal 1C do not function as independent, full-scale terminals. Terminal 1A is described as unusable because of infrastructure constraints and obsolete equipment. Terminal 1C has only six contact gates and depends on Terminal 1B for passenger check-in. Passenger processing is split between Terminal 1B’s two security hold areas and Terminal 1C, restricting movement and affecting asset utilisation and service quality.
This means that a phased construction plan cannot be assessed simply by counting terminals or gates. A terminal may be physically available but operationally dependent on another building. Removing one part can therefore affect check-in, security, boarding, baggage handling and passenger circulation in the remaining parts. The proposed T1B-first approach is intended to address precisely this interdependence, although the report does not establish whether the proposal has been accepted, technically cleared or given a construction timeline.
The airport’s operational links extend beyond passenger buildings. Mumbai International Airport Ltd has proposed a 3-kilometre underground airside tunnel connecting the aprons of Terminals 1 and 2, as well as additional aircraft parking stands south of runway 09-27. At present, when Terminal 2 lacks parking stands, some aircraft are parked at the Terminal 1 apron. Passengers and baggage must then be moved between the terminals using a perimeter road and runway 14-32.
The apron arrangement illustrates why the airport’s capacity problem cannot be solved only by adding floor space inside a terminal. Aircraft parking, passenger processing and baggage movement are connected systems. A constraint in one area can transfer pressure to another. If aircraft stands are unavailable, terminal gates alone cannot solve the problem. If passenger processing is divided between dependent buildings, additional nominal capacity may not translate into reliable throughput.
The proposed changes also expose the institutional complexity of Mumbai’s airport system. Fadnavis has addressed the civil aviation minister, while MIAL has communicated slot and operating constraints to airlines. AAHL has proposed the transfer of international services to Navi Mumbai, and IATA has pressed for a phased redevelopment approach. Each institution is looking at a different part of the same system: state government concerns about Mumbai’s connectivity, the operator’s need to create construction space, airlines’ requirements for predictable slots and the aviation ministry’s responsibility for coordinating airport capacity.
The 14 international routes matter because they connect Mumbai with Gulf, South Asian and Southeast Asian destinations. The supplied report does not quantify the passenger volumes or airline-by-airline exposure on these routes, so the scale of the effect on travellers cannot be established from the available evidence. It does, however, show that the proposed change would involve international operations rather than only a temporary domestic redistribution within Mumbai airport.
The capacity figures indicate the scale of the transition. Terminal 1 has a stated capacity of 15 million passengers per annum, while the first phase of demolition is expected to displace 5 million passengers per annum of domestic traffic. Terminal 2 would therefore need to absorb additional domestic operations while also managing a proposed reduction in international operations. The report does not provide the airport’s total current passenger throughput, so it is not possible to calculate the overall percentage change or determine whether the proposed measures would be sufficient.
The planned timeline creates another pressure point. The entire Terminal 1 is scheduled for demolition by March 2028, but reconstruction would begin only after demolition and the replacement is expected by December 2030. The gap is therefore not merely a construction inconvenience. It is the period during which Mumbai’s existing aviation network would have to operate with reduced or redistributed capacity. The debate over sequencing is ultimately a debate over whether that gap should be managed through relocation or reduced by constructing replacement capacity before demolition.
Navi Mumbai airport is positioned in the plan as a potential relief valve, but the report shows that its use is contested. Fadnavis has said that flights should not be moved out of Mumbai, while airlines and citizens have opposed the proposed transfer. The report does not provide the government’s final decision, the airport’s revised implementation plan or the airlines’ confirmed schedules. Those unresolved decisions will determine whether the proposal remains an operational plan or becomes a wider reconfiguration of Mumbai’s airport network.
The central urban question is how a metropolitan region maintains essential connectivity while rebuilding infrastructure that can no longer be treated as a collection of isolated facilities. Mumbai airport’s T1 redevelopment involves buildings, runways, aircraft stands, baggage routes, security areas, slots and the relationship between two airports serving the same region. The current dispute makes that interdependence visible.
What the evidence confirms is that Mumbai’s terminal redevelopment faces a real capacity and sequencing challenge. What remains unsettled is whether Terminal 1B can be developed first, whether the phased approach is technically and administratively feasible, and how the civil aviation ministry, airport operator, airlines and state government will reconcile their competing priorities. The next significant developments will be the ministry’s response to Fadnavis’s proposal, the final Summer 2027 operating plan and any decision on the timing and structure of Terminal 1’s reconstruction.
