Navi Mumbai Airport "Is Here For All Passengers": Jeet Adani To NDTV

The Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) has been designed to be affordable and accessible for all passengers, Jeet Adani, Director of Adani Airports, has said. 

Adani Airports Holdings, which co-developed the airport with City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP), aims to serve a wide range of travellers, from first-time flyers to frequent corporate passengers.

“The airport is here to cater to all passengers,” Jeet Adani told NDTV Profit. “From the food to the art to the hospitality, everything has been carefully curated, keeping in mind our passengers,” he added.

With the grand opening of the airport scheduled for December 25, anticipation has intensified across Navi Mumbai, the wider Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and surrounding areas. The new facility is expected to significantly ease congestion at Mumbai's existing airport while offering a travel experience tailored to the needs of Indian passengers.

Affordability has also influenced many operational choices, especially in the food and beverage area. Adani Airports has redesigned traditional supply chains to keep costs lower for travellers, particularly in food courts.

Jeet Adani said the airport works directly with chefs, cutting out middlemen, which allows better control over prices. As a result, popular items will be offered at more reasonable rates.

“We've cut all the middlemen and gone directly to the chef. We were able to price a vada pav, for example, at a decent enough price of Rs 80-100,” he said.

Another focus during planning was addressing language barriers for first-time travellers. To make navigation easier, the airport has introduced digital signs that change based on a passenger's destination.

With this system, destination names on display boards will appear in the local language of the city the traveller is flying to, helping reduce confusion and making it easier to move around the terminal.

“We've really thought through the design, the elements that have gone into building the airport,” Jeet Adani said.

NMIA has also completed its Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT) exercise. This full-scale trial involved hundreds of simulated passengers to test every aspect of airport operations, including check-in, security, boarding, and baggage handling.

The airport will initially operate three airlines: IndiGo, Akasa, and Air India Express. The first inbound flight, IndiGo 6E460 from Bengaluru, is scheduled to land at 8 am on December 25, followed by the first outbound flight to Hyderabad at 8:40 am. In its first month, NMIA will operate 12 hours daily, handling 23 scheduled departures.

Adani Enterprises plans to aggressively bid for 11 airports that the government plans to lease to the private sector, as part of the company's $11 billion expansion strategy for airport infrastructure.

"We will be bidding for all (11) of them," Jeet Adani said in an interview in Mumbai this week, as reported by the news agency Reuters.

Adani Airports already manages seven airports across the country. The Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) will take the tally to eight.

Jeet Adani said the company has no plans to enter the airline business, citing thin margins. "You need to have a certain mindset to run an airline. I don't think we have that mindset. Our comfort and our core competency is in creating hard assets on the ground, long gestation assets, running them quite efficiently," he said.

(Disclaimer: New Delhi Television is a subsidiary of AMG Media Networks Limited, an Adani Group Company.)