Until and through 2008, it was the busiest airport in India. It has since lost that distinction to Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, which currently makes Mumbai the second busiest airport in India in terms of overall passenger traffic. The airport has five operating terminals spread over an operational area of 1,500 acres (610 ha); CSIA handled 30.74 million passengers and 656,369 tonnes of cargo during FY 2011-12.
Along with Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport and Chennai International Airport it handles more than half of the air traffic in South Asia. In 2010, CSIA was ranked the 30th busiest airport in the world in terms of cargo with 671,238 tonnes handled. In 2011, the airport was ranked the third-best in the world in the 25–40 million passengers category by Airports Council International. Also in 2011, the airport was the 44th busiest in the world with 30,439,122 passengers handled, registering a 7.6% growth rate over the previous year.
It is situated in the suburb of Santa Cruz and the Sahar neighbourhood of Andheri suburb in the pincode area of 400099. Mumbai International Airport Limited, a consortium of GVK Industries Ltd, Airports Company South Africa and Bidvest, was appointed to carry out the modernisation of Mumbai Airport in February 2006. This project was to be completed by end of 2013, but this has been delayed by another year to the end of 2014. Once completed, CSIA will be capable of handling 40 million passengers and 1 million metric tonnes of cargo annually. The construction of a dedicated six lane, elevated road connecting the new terminal with the main arterial Western Express Highway is underway.
The Juhu Aerodrome functioned as Mumbai's sole airport until 1942. Due to operational constraints imposed by its low-level location and proximity to the Arabian Sea coastline making it vulnerable during the monsoon season, a move further inland became necessary.
RAF Santacruz was set up in 1942. It was a bigger airfield than Juhu and was home to several RAF squadrons during World War II from 1942 to 1947. The Airport covered an area of about 1,500 acres (610 ha) and initially had three runways. The apron existed on the south side of runway 09/27, and the area, referred to today as the "Old Airport", houses, among others, maintenance hangars of Air India, Air Works India and MIAL's General Aviation Terminal.
By 1946, when the RAF began the process of handing over the airfield to the Director General of Civil Aviation for Civil operations, two old abandoned hangars of the Royal Air Force had been converted into a terminal for passenger traffic. One hangar was used as a domestic terminal and the other for international traffic. It had counters for customs and immigration checks on either side and a lounge in the centre. Air India handled its passengers in its own terminal adjoining the two hangars. In its first year, it handled six civilian services a day.
Traffic at the airport increased after Karachi was partitioned to Pakistan and as many as 40 daily internal and foreign services operated by 1949, prompting the Indian Government to develop the airport, equipping the airport with a night landing system comprising a Radio range and a modernised flare path lighting system Construction of a new passenger terminal and apron began in 1950 and was commissioned in 1958,.Named after the neighbourhood in which it stood and initially under the aegis of the Public Works Department, the new airport was subsequently run by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. After a major fire gutted the Santa Cruz terminal in 1979, a temporary departure extension or "Gulf Terminal" became functional in October that year.
With the dawning of the Jumbo Jet era in the 1970s, Santacruz, despite several extensions, began suffering from insufficient operational capacity. The Tata committee, set up in 1967 to examine the issues concerning the airport, had recommended the construction of a new international terminal to meet the requirements of traffic in the seventies. The Santa Cruz terminal was to be used for domestic traffic alone. The International Airport Authority of India (IAAI), which was set up in 1972, started planning the construction of a new terminal building for handling international passenger traffic, to be completed by 1981. Accordingly construction of the new International terminal at Sahar to the north-east of Santacruz was taken up at an estimated cost of Rs. 110 million. The terminal was made operational in 1980.
The airport consists of two passenger terminals: Terminal 1 at Santacruz for domestic flights and Terminal 2 at Sahar for international flights. These terminals use the same airside facilities but are physically separated on the cityside, requiring a 15–20 minute (airside) drive between them. MIAL operates coach shuttle services between the domestic and international terminals for transit passengers.
An Airbus 380 test flight ending at Mumabi Airport over Runway 09-27
Mumbai has two intersecting runways. Both runways have been upgraded to Code F, which means they can accommodate larger aircraft like the Airbus A380. Following a presentation in March 2011 by UK’s air traffic service provider NATS on how the capacity of the airport can be increased, MIAL set a target of 48 aircraft movements an hour in an effort to reduce congestion at the airport.
Both runways were operated simultaneously especially during peak hours to try and attain this target. MIAL scrapped simultaneous Cross-runway flight operations in mid-2013 after it found that single runway operations were more effective for increasing Aircraft movements per hour. Runway 14/32 is now used only when the main runway is unavailable due to maintenance or other reasons. The construction of new rapid exit taxiways helped in increasing flight handling capacity from 32 movements per hour to 44 in 2012.
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