First commercial flight lands at NMIA, inauguration planned on April 17

PANVEL: The first commercial flight, an Indigo Airbus 320, landed successfully at the under-construction Navi Mumbai International Airport on Sunday afternoon, taking it a step closer to operationalisation by mid-May. The flight, which took off from Mumbai airport at 12.32pm, was welcomed with traditional water salute by two crash fire tenders amidst a picnic-like environment, with senior officials from the DGCA, AAI, Adani Airport Holdings Limited, customs and other stakeholders and their families camping at the site. Operations will begin with domestic flights followed by international flights around six months later, said Vijay Singhal, vice-chairman and managing director of City and Industrial Development Corporation, which is developing the airport jointly with Adani Airports Holdings Limited under a private public partnership. The ₹20,000-crore airport, launched by prime minister Narendra Modi in 2018, will have two parallel runways and two full-length parallel taxiways, catering annually to 90 million passengers and 2.6 million tons of cargo when complete.