Airlines may operate more international flights to the fledgling Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) in the future, with the tariff regulator allowing a full waiver of landing charges for all new flights from there—even if they already fly the same route from the Mumbai airport.
Flights up to 5,000 km will get 100% landing fee waiver in the first year and a 50% discount in the second year, while those beyond 5,000 km will enjoy a 25% waiver in the third year as well, a new order from the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India (AERA) showed. The incentive is available to both Indian and foreign airlines.
Currently, all new international flights out of both NMIA and Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) enjoy the waiver. The new order means an airline already operating a 5,000-km flight can shift to NMIA and still avail of the waiver. The move aims to attract new international flights to the Adani Group-owned airport, which began operations last year.
Simply put, an airline already flying to Dubai from CSMIA can now launch Navi Mumbai-Dubai flights and still qualify for the benefits. Under the earlier rule, it would not have qualified.
Adani Airports did not respond to Mint’s queries.
Challenge
AERA said the immediate challenge is to get airlines to use the airport’s capacity. The revised incentive lowers one component of the cost of launching international services and gives carriers greater flexibility, and add Navi Mumbai flights even on routes they already operate from Mumbai. In its 8 September order, AERA said “airlines have been unwilling to commence international operations from NMI, resulting in under-utilization of the said infrastructure.” The observation was based on a 4 August letter from Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd (NMIAL) officials. Airlines have cited the “quantum of aeronautical tariffs” as one reason for holding back international operations despite concessions already offered, AERA noted.
Normal international flight landing fee at Navi Mumbai is ₹1,850 per tonne of aircraft weight in the first year. For an aircraft weighing 80 tonnes, that works out to ₹1.48 lakh per landing. Under the first-year incentive, the airline pays nothing.
In a separate order, some benefits were also extended to GMR-run Bhogapuram airport for airlines which start international operations or introduce new routes, post March 2026. Benefits include lower landing and parking charges. The idea is to bring in more international traffic to the airport.
Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra and Bhogapuram in Andhra Pradesh are two of the three major airports inaugurated in the past year. The third one, at Jewar in Uttar Pradesh, is yet to start international operations.
NMIAL also pointed to higher fuel and insurance costs, airspace closures, geopolitical conflicts and weak demand, which have made carriers more cautious about starting services from the new airport.
Incentive not new
“AERA is not giving Navi Mumbai a completely new type of incentive. It is changing the eligibility rule so that an international destination does not have to be new to the entire Mumbai region, it only has to be new from Navi Mumbai,” said Amit Mittal, aviation expert and director at consultancy firm Aerointellect Aviation. “For Navi Mumbai, it would mean attracting domestic and international carriers. And passengers could see lower ticket prices, as airlines pass on these benefits subsequently,” he said.
The incentive could be particularly important for NMIA as Adani’s airport venture seeks to build the airport as a major hub. In October 2024, Jeet Adani, director of Adani Airport Holdings, said the airport would “play a pivotal role in the region’s growth, serving as a crucial hub for travellers across the globe.”
Earlier, AERA had made relaxations for airport operators, and these were on a case-to-case basis.
At Mumbai airport, for instance, the tariff plan approved in 2025 offered nil landing charges in the first year for a new international destination, but only if that destination had not been served from Mumbai in the previous two IATA seasons.
At Goa’s Manohar International Airport in Mopa, the incentive worked differently. International landing charges reduce as an airline increases its annual number of arrivals.
“For Adani Airports, attracting those flights would help improve international traffic and utilization at the new airport—and move NMIA closer to its proposed role as a second major aviation hub for the Mumbai region,” Mittal said.