Navi Mumbai, Sep 24 (IANS): Newly appointed City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) chairman Sanjay Shirsat on Tuesday announced that the Air Force will conduct the first trial landing of a fighter jet in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on October 5 in the first of two runways of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA).

After inspecting the construction of the first of the two runways of the airport, Shirsat further stated that the state government intends to open the airport for domestic flights in the month of March 2025.

Shirsat’s statement comes ahead of the likely announcement of the schedule for the upcoming assembly election in Maharashtra by the second week of October.

He also hinted that the Prime Minister’s presence will further reiterate the MahaYuti government’s commitment to push a slew of infrastructure projects in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region to increase its economy to $300 billion by 2030 from the present level of $140 billion.

The commencement of the operations at NMIA's two phases will handle 20 million passengers annually.

“After the launch of operations in March for domestic flights, the Adani Group and CIDCO Board will together plan the launch of international flights from June for the same runway. The commencement of the airport’s operations will contribute in a big way to the development of the MMR and the state in general. The NMIA has the capacity to park 350 aircraft at a time. Also, this airport has four different terminals and since they are interconnected the passengers will have the option of an internal travel route to go from one terminal to another,” said Shirsat.

He added that the airport will be connected through Atal Setu and metro rail.

According to CIDCO, the airport, spread across 1,160 hectares of land and located approximately 35 km from Mumbai Airport, will have four passenger terminals, one dedicated general aviation terminal, one cargo terminal and two runways.

The cost of NMIA is Rs 16,700 crore.

In August, the Airport Authority of India completed Instrument Landing System (ILS) testing which calibrates the flight path to ensure the operational readiness of the airport.