Following successful trials of the Instrument Landing System (ILS), the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) is set for its first aircraft landing trial on October 5. Sanjay Sirsat, the newly appointed chairman of the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), made this announcement during a site inspection on Tuesday.
Sirsat revealed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend the event. After touring the site, he expressed satisfaction with the project’s progress and emphasized the urgency of expediting work to meet deadlines. “We anticipate the airport will be operational very soon,” he stated, noting that an Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft will perform the trial landing on the runway.
The trial is scheduled to take place in the presence of the Prime Minister, with all arrangements being coordinated by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The current deadline for the airport's commercial operations is set for March 31, 2025.
During the site visit, Sirsat was accompanied by Vijay Singhal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of CIDCO, Sheela Karunakaran, Chief Engineer of the NMIA Project, and other CIDCO officials involved in the airport’s development.
The NMIA, India’s largest Greenfield airport, is being constructed by CIDCO over 1,160 hectares in two phases. Once completed, it will have the capacity to handle 90 million passengers and 2.5 million tons of cargo annually. The airport will feature two parallel runways and two full-length taxiways to facilitate separate aircraft movements. The development is being executed by NMIAL, a concessionaire company, under a public-private partnership. Pre-development work is complete, and construction is currently underway.