Mumbai Airport Turns Down Gulf Airlines’ Summer 2027 Slots, Leaving Them to Move to Navi Mumbai or Pause Flights

On November 5, 2026, the operator of Mumbai’s main airport told at least 11 Gulf airlines it could not give them the slots they had requested for the Summer 2027 season. The airlines serve 14 international destinations that the airport wants served from the new Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMI) instead.

Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), controlled by the Adani Group, sent the message by email, according to Mint, which reviewed it. Neither Adani nor the Ministry of Civil Aviation answered Mint’s questions.

What the airport told the airlines

The email, as quoted by Mint, said the airport’s capacity “will be reduced by 5 MPPA” (million passengers per annum) from the Northern Summer 2027 schedule. As a result, it was “unable to accommodate requested Summer 2027 slots,” which meant “a temporary transition out of BOM T2” from the start of that season.

The Summer 2027 schedule starts on March 28, 2027. The airport said the airlines’ historic slots would be fully restored once the expansion of Terminal 2 adds capacity, The Indian Express and Mint both reported.

That will take a while. Terminal 1 demolition starts in April 2027 and a new north-west pier at Terminal 2 is due in service in March 2029, according to the airport’s plan as reported by PTI.

Business Standard, which first reported the notice, said the airlines were offered two choices: move to Navi Mumbai from Summer 2027, or suspend their Mumbai flights until the rebuild is done, Aviation A2Z reported, citing that report.

Which airlines and routes are affected

Mint and CNBC-TV18 named the same 11 Gulf carriers: Air Arabia, Gulf Air, Kuwait Airways, Oman Air, Saudia, Qatar Airways, Riyadh Air, Jazeera Airways, SalamAir, flyadeal and flynas. Mint said a 12th airline was also turned down but could not confirm its name.

The 14 destinations are Bahrain, Dammam, Dhaka, Doha, Fujairah, Jakarta, Jeddah, Kathmandu, Kuwait City, Madinah, Muscat, Ras Al Khaimah, Riyadh and Sharjah. They are the routes Indian airlines already agreed to move, which is how the list was drawn up.

An official familiar with the talks told Mint that 38 of 50 international airlines got their Summer 2027 slots, and the 12 that did not have 16 daily departures. By Mint’s count, the affected carriers run about 112 weekly departures, nearly 15% of Mumbai airport’s 770 weekly international departures.

How it got here

Late in October, IndiGo, Air India Express and Akasa Air agreed to move some Gulf and Asian flights to Navi Mumbai. Those plans cover about 3 million of the 5 million annual passengers the airport wants out of Mumbai, according to PTI and The Indian Express.

On October 30, MIAL wrote to civil aviation secretary Samir Kumar Sinha asking foreign airlines to propose voluntary moves by November 3, Mint reported. If they did not, the letter said, it would move all flights to the 14 destinations.

The letter argued that this keeps every flight to those cities “available at one airport instead of being split at two airports in the same region,” CNBC-TV18 reported. Navi Mumbai is about 30 miles (50 km) from the existing airport, according to Mint.

Gulf carriers have called the move “unilateral” and said they were not consulted, according to The Indian Express. They questioned whether it complies with the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s 2013 guidelines and IATA’s slot rules, and the Airline Operators’ Committee has asked the ministry to step in.

In early October, when the plan was bigger, IATA asked the ministry to intervene and said any transfer should be voluntary, Aviation A2Z reported. Mint said it could not verify whether the ministry has approved the slot cuts.

Why a slot decision matters so much

At a coordinated airport like Mumbai, an airline cannot simply schedule a flight. It needs a slot, and under IATA’s slot rules it keeps a series of slots from season to season only by flying it at least 80% of the time.

Allocation starts from the capacity the airport declares. By declaring 5 million fewer passengers for Summer 2027, MIAL shrank the pool, and the Gulf requests were the ones left out.

Adani appears to expect some airlines to stop flying to Mumbai rather than move. On Adani Enterprises’ quarterly earnings call in late October, Adani Airport Holdings CEO Arun Bansal said “there might be one or two airlines that decide not to operate from Mumbai for a couple of years,” Skift reported.