Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is the international airport serving Mumbai, the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra, and one of two airports serving the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the other being the Navi Mumbai International Airport. It is the second-busiest airport in India in terms of total and international passenger traffic after Delhi, the 14th-busiest airport in Asia, and the 28th-busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic in 2025.

The airport is operated by Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), a joint venture between Adani Enterprises, a subsidiary of the Adani Group, and Airports Authority of India,

The airport is named after Shivaji (1630–1680), the 17th-century Chhatrapati of the Maratha Empire. It was renamed in 1999 from the previous "Sahar Airport" to "Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport" (the title "Maharaj" was inserted on 30 August 2018). It is situated across the suburbs of Santacruz and Sahar Village in Vile Parle East.

History

RAF Santa Cruz was constructed in the 1930s. It was a bigger airfield than the nearby Juhu Aerodrome and was home to several RAF squadrons during World War II from 1942 to 1947. The Airport covered an area of about 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, Indamer Aviation Pvt Ltd, 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 domestic and foreign services were 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.

With the dawning of the jumbo jet era in the 1970s, Santacruz, despite several extensions, began suffering from insufficient operational capacity. The Santacruz terminal was designed to accommodate 600 passengers at any given time, but by the late 1970s, it was handling 1,200. In 1979–80, 5 million domestic and international passengers flew into and out of Santa Cruz compared with 3 million at Delhi's Palam Airport. The airlines were constantly expanding their services, but there was no corresponding increase in space at the terminal, making it the most congested airport in the country. In one of its issues, Time magazine, referring to the chaos, called the terminal building a "black hole". A major fire gutted the International section of the terminal building on 21 September 1979, killing three passengers and shutting down the airport. A temporary departure extension or "Gulf Terminal" was made functional in October of that year until the terminal was repaired.

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 northeast of Santacruz in Vile Parle was taken up at an estimated cost of 110 million. Construction of the new international terminal at Sahar began in November 1977, and the first phase took three years to build. Sahar Terminal 2A, the first phase of the two-part terminal, was opened on 5 December 1980.

AAI had been considering the modernisation of Bombay Airport in 1996, although the AAI board approved a modernisation proposal only in 2003. By then, Bombay and Delhi Airports were handling almost 38% of the country's aircraft movements and generating one-third of all revenues earned by AAI. At that time, the Bombay airport handled 13.3 million passengers, 60% of whom were domestic travellers. The airport faced severe congestion for both aircraft and passengers as it was handling twice as many aircraft movements per day as it was originally designed for. The bidding process for its modernisation eventually began in May 2004, with the decision by the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) was announced in January 2006. In November 2006, Delta Air Lines inaugurated a direct flight from Mumbai to New York.

In January 2009, the International Terminal 2A was demolished to make way for the new terminal. The new Terminal was inaugurated 5 years later in January 2014, although it was open to passenger operations the following month. Terminals 2B and 2C were subsequently demolished by the end of 2014. Terminal 2 subsequently started domestic operations in 2015, with Vistara launching flights to Delhi. A new Air Traffic Control tower was also inaugurated, which replaced the old tower until 2014.

During the lockdown in COVID-19 pandemic starting March 2020, commercial operations were suspended, although rescue flights to bring back expat Indians were in effect, operated by Air India and Air India Express. Passengers arriving had to undergo mandatory testing and quarantine period.

The Adani Group took over the operations in February 2021 from GVK. The group holds a 74% stake, while the rest is controlled by Airports Authority of India.

In 2025, MIAL proposed to increase CSMIA's capacity from 55 MPA to 65 MPA. The existing Terminal 1 building, with a capacity of 15 MPA was proposed to be re-constructed to handle 20 MPA at a cost of about Rs 2,500 crore. The project was initially estimated to be completed in three years with demolition activity planned to begin in November 2025 and construction planned to be completed by September 2028. However the demolition has now been pushed back to 2030. and expected to be completed by 2033–34. T2 would be expanded to handle 45 MPA from the current 40 MPA. MIAL proposed construction of about 13,080 square metres of additional floor space at a cost of Rs 107.3 crore. The Northwest pier is proposed to be extended in order to accommodate a dedicated crew terminal at T2. This will free up space for passengers at T2, since nearly 2000 air crew who board flights daily have to use the common passenger areas. The dedicated crew terminal will cover about 3,000 square metres and is expected to cost Rs 43 crore. The extended pier will also have extra bus and contact gates. MIAL expects the crew terminal to be ready by 2026 The existing general aviation (GA) terminal is also to be expanded at a cost of Rs 225 crore, from current floor area of 890 square metres to 10,783 square metres.

Passenger traffic and operational records Its passenger traffic was about 49.8 million in year 2018. It is also the second-busiest airport in terms of cargo traffic. In March 2017, the airport surpassed London's Gatwick Airport as the world's busiest to operate a single runway at a time. This was later surpassed again by Gatwick Airport at the end of 2019 due to passenger numbers falling at Mumbai.

It handled a record of 1,007 aircraft movements on 9 December 2018, higher than its earlier record of 1,003 flight movements in a day in June 2018. It handled a record of 51 movements in one hour on 16 September 2014. In financial year 2020, the airport handled 45.87 million passengers, only second to IGI's 67.3 million in India. In financial year 2024–25, the airport handled the highest ever passengers in its history of over 55.1 million passengers, surpassing its maximum capacity of 50 million passengers per year, and second only to IGI's 79.2 million in India.

Management and modernisation A consortium of GVK Industries, Airports Company South Africa, and Bidvest, won the bid to run the Mumbai Airport. To accomplish this task, Mumbai International Airport Private Limited (MIAL), a joint venture between the consortium (74%) and the Airports Authority of India (26%) was formed. Since then, MIAL has made several improvements in the aesthetics, design and passenger conveniences at CSMIA including the refurbishment of domestic terminals 1A & 1B, international terminals 2B & 2C, and the opening of a brand new domestic terminal 1C and new Terminal T2. MIAL also undertook airside improvement projects such as the commissioning of new taxiways, and aprons and the reconstruction of the two runways. In February 2008, MIAL entered into an agreement with Air Transport IT specialist SITA that led to CSIA becoming the first airport in India to Implement Common-use self-service Kiosks and CUTE (Common Use Terminal Equipment) check-in systems.

In February 2021, the Adani Group, through its subsidiary, Adani Enterprises acquired both GVK and Bidvest's stakes in MIAL, giving it a controlling interest of 74% in the venture.

Structure Runways The airport has two intersecting runways and handles an average of 980 flights per day. The runways were upgraded to Code F, which means they can accommodate larger aircraft like the Airbus A380."Common Agreement Document of the A380 Airport Compatibility Group Version 2.1 " page 8, European Civil Aviation Conference, December 2002. Retrieved 4 December 2012. 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 was henceforth to be used only when the main runway was 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. NATS delivered and helped MIAL implement a 'change roadmap' to help CSMIA achieve more than 50 movements per hour in 2015. The increased air-side efficiencies resulted in CSMIA overtaking Gatwick Airport in March 2017 to become the world's busiest airport with only one operational runway at a time.

NumberLengthWidthILSNotes09–27Cat. II (27); Cat. I (09)14–32Cat. I (both directions)

Runway notes

Once the longest commercial runway in India, Runway 09/27 is the airport's main runway. 13 taxiways, including four rapid exit taxiways, connect it to a full-length parallel taxiway to its north. It intersects the secondary runway south of the terminal buildings. The reconstruction of the runway started in September 2010 and was completed in May 2011. The runway width was increased from to with a runway shoulder width of 7.5 m added on each side. The ILS on 27 starts at and is long with a glide slope path of 3°.