An incredible new airport that has been under construction for more than nine years will open to passengers for the first time on Christmas Day.
The incredible centre, set on a 1,160-hectare (4.5-square-mile) site, has been built in Navi Mumbai.
east of Mumbai, which is home to an estimated 2.6 million people in a wider metropolitan area of 26 million.
The opening of Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMI) will mean that India’s financial capital
Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.
Mumbai will be the first city in India to join Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (BOM) as having more than one airport.
Plans for the project were first proposed in 1997, and construction of the airport began in October 2016.
The project was estimated to cost ₹167 billion (£1.4 billion) and is planned to be implemented in three phases by 2032 with the capacity to handle 90 million passengers and 2.5 million tonnes of cargo per year.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally opened the airport in October.
The first flight to land at the airport will be IndiGo 6E460 from Bengaluru, South India, which will take off at 8am on December 25.
Shortly afterwards, IndiGo 6E882 will depart for Hyderabad at 8.40 am, becoming the first outbound service from the new airport. Ultimately, airlines flying from the hub will include:
Air India Express, Akasa Air, IndiGo and Star Air are all scheduled to commence operations by the end of the year.
The airport is equipped with a 12,100-foot-long single runway, with special technology that allows aircraft to land at visibility levels up to 980 feet.
The airport will eventually have two parallel runways enabling simultaneous operations.
The construction of three interconnected terminals will complete the lotus-shaped single passenger terminal building in phases.
The cargo terminal, spread over 360,000 square feet, is designed to handle 0.8 million tonnes of cargo annually.
The airport will have 67 general aviation aircraft stands, including a dedicated heliport. It is also equipped with food courts, lounges, travelators and other facilities for passengers.
A temporary control tower for air traffic has been built overlooking the single runway.
The tower is expected to remain in service for six to seven years, after which it will be replaced by a larger tower to be built near the terminal buildings, which will provide coverage for the planned two parallel runways.
The airport will be connected to the proposed Gold Line (Line 8) of the Mumbai Metro and is also planned to be the terminal station of the proposed Mumbai-Hyderabad high-speed rail corridor.
