Adani Airports expects passenger traffic at its 8 airports to hit 120 mn next year

Mumbai, Dec 19 (PTI) Adani Airports expects total passenger traffic at its eight airports, including the soon-to-be-operational Navi Mumbai airport, to touch 120 million next year, a senior official has said.

In an interaction with PTI ahead of the start of commercial operations from the Navi Mumbai International Airport on December 25, Adani Airport Holdings Ltd (AAHL) Director Jeet Adani stressed that there is "no need" to scout for assets abroad as the priority now is to focus on the domestic market.

"Last year, I believe, we had close to 89-90 million (passengers from seven airports). I think this year, we will be somewhere close to 100 million," Adani said.

Next year, he said there will be a bigger jump because of Navi Mumbai.

"So, we will go up to 120 million (passengers)," he said.

Currently, AAHL operates seven airports -- Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, and Mangalore.

Navi Mumbai International Airport, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October this year and set to commence operations on December 25, will be the eighth airport under AAHL.

The greenfield facility, the second in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region after the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, is being developed in multiple phases by the special purpose vehicle NMIAL, in which Adani Group has a 74 per cent stake and the remaining 26 per cent stake is with the Maharashtra government's land development authority CIDCO.

Spread across 1,160 hectares, Navi Mumbai International Airport, upon completion of all phases, will have four terminals with a capacity to handle 90 million passengers per annum and a cargo capacity of 3.25 million metric tonnes, making it one of the largest aviation hubs in Asia.

Noting that the new airport is going to be "quite important" in the overall ecosystem, he said, "Even for Adani Airports, this is going to be our largest asset as of yet. And by the time this airport becomes a 90 million passenger airport, hopefully the Adani Airports platform will be crossing 500 million in total passengers being served every year." "And I truly think that is possible. With the way the aviation market is growing, people are flying, year-on-year; we are seeing passenger growth of mid-teens up to double-digit growth rates. And I personally believe this will continue," he said.

"The biggest challenge I see to this (passenger growth) is just the supply constraint in terms of new planes coming in, which we see early signs are now converting to positive early signs. But I think that's the biggest challenge here," he said.

Adani said Navi Mumbai airport has, for the first time, been planned, built and designed keeping in mind the "new age of airports" and the "new age of India" in the global airport ecosystem.

"We are starting the first phase with 20 million passengers. As we go on, we are starting work on the next phase immediately after the full-fledged stabilisation of this phase, which is somewhere in the next year... so we have to make a decision between 30-50 million passengers for the new terminal," he said.

India is one of the world's fastest-growing domestic civil aviation markets and Indian airlines are expanding their fleets to meet the rising traffic demand while new airports are also coming up.

According to Adani, India has all intentions to become a global aviation hub.

"We truly believe that the way the entire infrastructure planning and design has been undertaken, not just for this but the next three terminals that are yet to be built, will make sure that Navi Mumbai airport becomes a global aviation hub for Indian airlines," he said.

He said the technology that has gone into creating the back-end infrastructure of the airport has been created from the ground-up.

"We have our own database and workflow management platform, which is the centre point behind creating all the functionality in this airport.

"What this means for a common passenger is that they will actually have access to information at the same time and with the same accuracy as that of an operator sitting inside the Airport Operations Control Centre (AOCC)," Adani said. PTI IAS RAM TRB