MUMBAI: A day after civil aviation secretary RN Choubey said that the
Navi Mumbai airport is likely to be inaugurated in 2021, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday stuck to his earlier announced deadline of 2019.
Speaking at an aviation summit in Delhi on Tuesday, Choubey said that the civil aviation ministry was optimistic that the second airport for Mumbai will be operational by September 2021. That meant that the deadline set by the CM would not be met.
On Wednesday though, Fadnavis stood his ground. "I don't know what he (Choubey) has said, but what I said you know (in March, CM told the assembly that the first terminal and runway of Navi Mumbai airport will be ready by 2019 end),'' Fadnavis told TOI on the sidelines of the US-India business council summit on Wednesday.
Currently,
Navi Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd has invited Expressions of Interest (EOI)s for engineering, procurement and construction work. The deadline for submitting EOI is September 10. Among the work to be carried out is construction of terminal building and airfield which includes runway, taxiway network, apron, airside infrastructure and also landside infrastructure like ancillary buildings.
The Mumbai airport, which operates out of a single runway, handled 48.5 million passengers in 2017-18. Domestic passenger traffic in India has been growing at a double-digit pace for three years, but Mumbai airport doesn't play a strong role here since its close to saturation with hardly any time slots available for landings and take-offs.
CM Devendra Fadnavis
