Goa: Manohar International Airport At Mopa To Operate From 5th January With First Flight From Hyderabad

The recently inaugurated Manohar International Airport (MIA) at Mopa in Goa is all set to receive its first passenger aircraft on Thursday (3 January).

The first flight is going to be an IndiGo Airlines flight from Hyderabad and around 11 flights are expected to arrive at the new airport on its first day.

IndiGo flight 6E 6145 will land at the facility from Hyderabad at 9 am on Thursday, a spokesperson from MIA said.

While domestic operations will start from Thursday onwards, international flights are expected to commence soon.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on 11 December, inaugurated the greenfield international airport in northern Goa.

The government has named the new airport after late Manohar Parrikar who served as Goa chief minister and union defence minister. 

An alternative to the busy Dabolim airport

Developed at a cost of around Rs 2,870 crore, the airport has been built on the theme of sustainable infrastructure.

The foundation stone of the airport was laid by the Prime Minister in November 2016.

Initially, phase-I of the Airport will cater to around 4.4 million passengers per annum (MPPA), which can be later expanded to a saturation capacity of 33 MPPA.

Mopa airport has been built on a Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) basis and will be operated through GMR Goa International Airport Limited (GGIAL) by GMR group for a period of 40 years, extendable by 20 years, as per broad lease agreements.

Mopa Airport is keenly awaited as Dabolim airport is suffering from capacity constraint.

Dabolim airport is managed by Indian Navy, and continues to be India’s biggest Naval airfield.

The current terminal in use at Dabolim, is designed to handle 2,750 passengers per hour and around 5 million passengers annually, state government data shows.

The statistics, however, reveal that the airport has already handled 5.24 million passengers between April and September this year.

This means limited slots for scheduled commercial flights at Dabolim , which leads to high fares in peak travel season for passengers.

(With inputs from PTI)