Mumbai was told to move 265 international flights to Navi Mumbai on 25 October. On Tuesday the government stopped it.

Mumbai's airport operator told airlines to give up 265 of the 770 international flights they run out of Terminal 2 each week and start flying them from Navi Mumbai instead, beginning with the winter schedule on 25 October. On Tuesday the Civil Aviation Ministry told the operator to stop and go back to the airlines.

Nothing has moved. Nothing has been cancelled. What has changed is that for anyone flying Mumbai to Dubai, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi or Bali this winter, the airport your flight leaves from is now an open question seventeen days before the season starts. That has not been true of Mumbai before.

What was actually ordered

Mumbai International Airport Ltd, the Adani-controlled operator of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International, asked carriers to discontinue 265 weekly international departures and move them to Navi Mumbai International Airport, which Adani also controls. Business Standard, which obtained the breakdown, put the figure at 34.4 per cent of the airport's weekly international departures. The two airports sit 35 to 40 kilometres apart on opposite sides of the harbour, linked by the Atal Setu sea bridge.

The reason is Terminal 1. MIAL is closing the domestic terminal from 25 October and keeping it shut until the replacement opens around 2029 or 2030. Mumbai Live reports that demolition starts on 15 January 2027 with the north section of T1-B, which handles roughly five million passengers a year. IndiGo, SpiceJet, Alliance Air and Star Air all fly from T1 and have to go somewhere. Akasa Air already moved across to T2 on 1 August. Pushing a third of the international flights out to Navi Mumbai is how MIAL planned to make room for them.

The order came with a timetable that tells you how this was going. A meeting on 16 September, which several airlines skipped. A 25 September deadline for transition plans, which several ignored. Then a final deadline of 4pm on 6 October for each airline to name in writing the slots it would surrender, failing which MIAL would pick for them.

Who was asked to lose what

The breakdown Business Standard published is the part worth reading if your trip touches any of the five countries we sell. Nearly every carrier flying Mumbai to the Gulf or to Southeast Asia was asked for about a third of its departures.

• IndiGo, 74 weekly departures out of 224. Air India, 33 of 100. Akasa Air, 11 of 32.
• Emirates and Etihad, 10 of 28 each. Air India Express, 7 of 21.
• Thai Airways, Air Arabia and SpiceJet, 5 of 14 each.
• Malaysia Airlines, 4 of 10.
• VietJet, Vietnam Airlines and Batik Air Malaysia, 3 of 7 each.
• flydubai, 2 of 5. Thai Vietjet, 2 of 4.

Read that list as a planner rather than a passenger and the problem is obvious. A carrier with four Mumbai flights a week cannot run two of them from an airport 40 kilometres from its own ground staff, its catering and its engineers. That is what Thai Vietjet was asked to do.

What the airlines said, and what the ministry did

IATA wrote to the ministry on 9 September calling it a forced relocation. Its letter questioned whether Navi Mumbai can yet support international operations at all, listing ground handling, aircraft maintenance, catering, cargo, crew transport and accommodation, regulatory approvals and passenger connectivity. Air France-KLM said flatly that it has no plan to split its flights between two Mumbai airports. The Airline Operators Committee disputed the one-third figure itself, the terminal capacity data behind it, and Adani's account of having consulted airlines since 2020. Its line, quoted by Business Standard, was that airlines cannot concur with any unilateral reduction or relocation.

The ministry met everybody in Delhi on Tuesday 6 October, the same day the 4pm deadline fell. Adani Airport Holdings, Navi Mumbai's operator, the Airports Authority of India, the Federation of Indian Airlines and the carriers were all in the room for about ninety minutes. The outcome, per Skift and Business Standard, is that MIAL must shelve this plan and produce one the airlines actually sign. The record of that agreement becomes part of the development plan approvals the ministry itself grants, which is the lever here. The next meeting is 13 October, with another around the 20th meant to settle a revised roadmap.

This is a pause, not a reversal. Adani has offered lower landing fees and said it will cover the gap in user development charges to make Navi Mumbai worth flying from. The ministry has not ruled on that. The flights are still going to move. Nobody has said when.

What this means for your ticket

Three things, in order of how much they can cost you.

First, the airport code. Chhatrapati Shivaji is BOM. Navi Mumbai is NMI. Today every international departure from the city is still BOM, and anything you have booked is unaffected. The moment a revised plan is agreed, some tickets stop saying BOM. Airlines handle that with a schedule-change email, which is exactly the email people delete.

Second, self-transfers. If you have built a Mumbai connection out of two separate tickets, which is how most cheap Bali and Phu Quoc itineraries get assembled, stop. A split that puts your international leg at NMI and your domestic leg at BOM hands you 40 kilometres of Mumbai road, at your own cost, with no through-checked bags and no airline obligation if you miss it. The Free Press Journal clocks Navi Mumbai at 40 minutes from south Mumbai over the Atal Setu in good conditions. Between the two airports, at six in the evening, treat that as a floor and not an estimate. The metro line meant to join them is years away.

Third, the ground. Navi Mumbai opened to commercial flights on 25 December 2025 and has flown almost no international traffic since, which is the actual reason this fight exists. Adani says the airport is built for about five million international passengers a year and has an eighty-room transit hotel waiting. Air India Express opened the first international route from there to Abu Dhabi in July. An airport with that little international flying has no habits yet, which means no accumulated knowledge of where the queues form at 2am.

What to do this week

• Open your booking and look at the departure airport code, not the city name. Do it again in late October.
• Do not buy a Mumbai self-transfer on two tickets for travel after 25 October. Pay for the single booking and make the airline own the connection.
• If an airline does move your departure to NMI, reply in writing and ask what it proposes to do about it before you accept the new itinerary. A changed airport is not a changed gate.
• If you are flying through Mumbai in the last week of October, allow for the domestic side too. T1 shuts on the 25th and everything in it lands on T2 in the same fortnight.
• Expect fares out of Mumbai to be noisy. Thinning a third of the international departures from one airport in the middle of the booking season is not a recipe for cheap seats, though no one has published numbers yet and I would not plan a trip around that guess.

Keep the first morning loose

The practical consequence of all this is at the far end. If there is a real chance your departure airport, and therefore your departure time, changes once more before you fly, the bookings to make now are the cheap ones you can shift, and the ones to leave until you land are anything that collects you before dawn.

Sky Views Dubai at ₹2,230 is the one I would put on an arrival evening, because it is in the middle of town, it takes an hour and nobody minds which hour. The Chao Phraya hop-on hop-off boat at ₹370 is the best value on this page by a wide margin and it does not care what time you show up, which is the entire point when your flight has already been moved twice. Mount Batur at ₹635 is the opposite case and I am including it as a warning: it is a 2am pickup, it is worth doing, and it is the last thing to book before your flight times are final.

The same logic applies to the full-day trips with a boat in them.

Nusa Penida at ₹3,655 is a long day with a fast-boat crossing attached, and the crossing is the bit that does not wait. Put it on day three of a Bali trip, never on the morning after you arrive. If your Mumbai departure slips to an evening and your landing slides with it, day one is for food and sleeping.

What is still unclear

Everything about the timing. There is no new date for the shift, no agreed number to replace 265, and no decision on the fee concessions Adani has offered. The airlines dispute the capacity figures the whole plan rests on. Air France-KLM has said no outright and nobody has explained what happens to a carrier that simply refuses.

What is not unclear is Terminal 1. That closes on 25 October regardless, MIAL has said it will honour airlines' historic slot rights when the new terminal opens, and the domestic flights now in T1 have to be somewhere by the end of the month. The pressure that produced this order has not gone anywhere. It has been given a week.

265 of 770 weekly international departures, 34.4 per cent of them, were due to leave Mumbai's main airport on 25 October. The order is deferred, not withdrawn, and the next meeting is on the 13th.

Read on 8 October 2026. The 265-flight order, the airline-by-airline breakdown, the IATA letter of 9 September and the Airline Operators Committee's response come from Business Standard, which reported both the order on 2 October and the ministry's deferral on 6 October. Skift reported the Delhi meeting, the 13 and 20 October dates and Adani's fee proposals. The Terminal 1 closure date and MIAL's slot assurance are from The Week, the demolition schedule from Mumbai Live, the Atal Setu timing from the Free Press Journal. Navi Mumbai's 25 December 2025 opening and its first Abu Dhabi route are from the airport's own launch coverage. This is a story being negotiated in meetings, so anything here can be true on Thursday and wrong on Friday. Your airline's email is the only version that pays out.