A pharmaceutical shipment bound for Manchester was supposed to leave Mumbai on October 1. Instead, it is now expected to reach its destination nearly two weeks later, after the logistics company handling it was forced to look for an alternative route following the shift of freighter operations to Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), operated by Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL).

The shipment, comprising pharmaceutical ingredients, was booked on Challenge Group’s freighter service from Mumbai. But after the mandatory shift of freighter operations to NMIA, the airline could not provide firm confirmation on when the cargo would move.

“We don’t have a confirmation from Challenge Group yet. But we have found an alternative route through Ahmedabad on Emirates, but for 13th October. The cargo will now travel from Ahmedabad to Dubai, then to London Stansted, before being moved by road to Manchester,” Rajen Bhatia, managing director of logistics company Tulsidas Khimji and secretary general of Air Cargo Agents Association of India (ACAAI), told The Core.

The rerouting is expected to add at least 15 days to the shipment’s transit time and push the total cost up by around 20-25%, Bhatia said.

The disruption does not end with a higher freight bill.

The shipment had initially been sent to Navi Mumbai, where it was stored after the logistics company was unable to use the new airport as a gateway. It will now be transported back to Ahmedabad before being flown out.

MIAL said the shift is linked to the planned redevelopment of Terminal 1 and is only a temporary transition. The airport operator said the demolition and reconstruction of T1 was originally scheduled to begin in mid-2025 but was voluntarily deferred because there was no alternative facility for airlines at the time.

“With NMIAL becoming operational, airlines now have an alternative option within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region,” a MIAL spokesperson said.

MIAL said airlines had been informed that the redevelopment would begin in January 2027 and that they could either relocate operations to NMIA or temporarily suspend them from October 25 until the new terminal is commissioned in 2029-30.

The airport operator also said the move would not affect airlines’ long-term position at Mumbai airport.

“This is a temporary transition, and MIAL will honour airlines' historic slot rights once the new terminal becomes operational,” the spokesperson said.

The incident offers an early glimpse of the difficulties. Navi Mumbai is still short of cargo spaces, dollies and other facilities. Most of its workforce is new, and a sterile area for pharmaceuticals has been pushed to a later phase. Some carriers have suspended Mumbai freighter services, while forwarders still operating there report delays of 72 hours or more, higher costs and damaged cargo, all passed on to customers who have little patience for an airport's learning curve.

The Airline Operators Committee (AOC) has asked the Adani group to share records of all consultations on Mumbai airport’s Terminal 1 redevelopment since 2020 and explain the basis for shifting 33% of international services to Navi Mumbai, Business Standard reported.

Teething Trouble

Challenge Group, a Malta-based international logistics company, has temporarily suspended its cargo flight operations to and from Mumbai, citing concerns over the current operational setup at NMIA.

“Following Challenge Group’s mandatory transition from the Mumbai airport to the Navi Mumbai airport, and an assessment of the current operating conditions at the Navi Mumbai airport, we have determined that the present operational setup does not yet enable us to deliver our cargo services with the level of reliability and certainty we require,” the company said in a LinkedIn post.

The transition has also prompted some carriers to suspend or relocate cargo operations rather than immediately shift them to NMIA. Lufthansa Cargo temporarily suspended its Mumbai freighter service, while Emirates SkyCargo has relocated scheduled Mumbai cargo services elsewhere amid concerns over operational reliability.

Air France-KLM, meanwhile, has said it does not plan to split its passenger operations between the two airports, although its Air France cargo aircraft will move to NMIA.

But while some carriers have suspended operations, other cargo companies are still preparing to start at NMIA—and say it is too early to judge the airport.

Group Concorde, which is in the process of starting operations at NMIA, said the new airport is still not fully ready.

“We are not working there yet; we are in the process of starting operations at NMIA. Things are not fully in shape right now, so it is probably very early to make a comment. It will probably be in shape in the next couple of weeks,” a spokesperson for Group Concorde told The Core.

The company, however, expects the disruption to be most pronounced in the initial period.

“I can definitely say there will be an impact in October, and that impact will gradually reduce over the next couple of months. It is an impact for this beginning period, and then things will start getting in shape,” the spokesperson said.

That does not mean the transition has been easy.

“There is definitely a difficult period right now. I hope for a better future for the whole ecosystem generally outside Mumbai, because the existing airport is also in a very messy situation. They say it is always difficult before things start to look good, so I think that is the situation,” the spokesperson said.

The teething problems at the Navi Mumbai Airport are both infrastructural and operational.

Around 70-75% of the workforce is new, while cargo operators are dealing with limited space between unloading and screening, a shortage of dollies and inadequate covered facilities for cargo and trucks. The industry is also grappling with the lack of an experienced cargo-handling team, adding to delays as the airport settles into live operations.

NMIA's initial cargo terminal has a designed capacity of around 500,000 tonnes a year, compared with nearly 890,000 tonnes handled by Mumbai airport in FY2024-25. The airport operator's stated position is that NMIA has been designed with dedicated infrastructure for different cargo categories and technology-led handling systems, with capacity and facilities being expanded in phases.

Cart Before The Horse?

The bigger concern for cargo operators is the timing of the move.

Airlines and logistics companies had been told earlier in the year that operations would have to shift, but the new airport was still some way from being ready when the industry was first asked to prepare.

“They started telling us at the beginning of the year, but they were far from ready at that time. So we didn't really take them seriously because we thought they were ready,” the Group Concorde spokesperson said.

The company only began seriously preparing for the transition later in the year.

“NMIA said last year as well that we were going to suspend all operations from August at Mumbai airport. So it was only in June, when they looked at it for the first time, that we figured it was not going to get extended beyond that,” the spokesperson said.

That left companies with a compressed window to make the move.

“Then we started working on it. The permissions and transition usually take four to five months, and considering NMIA is a new airport, there are still areas that they are not ready with,” the spokesperson said.

One of the airlines associated with Group Concorde had to suspend operations after delays in obtaining the necessary permissions began to affect its business.

The industry had expected some disruption from the move. But the concern is that the transition was effectively made mandatory before all the systems needed to support cargo operations were fully in place.

“Obviously, it was not the best way to have done it—just asking everyone to leave, including us. One of my carriers also had to suspend operations. But hopefully, it will be okay in the next couple of months,” the spokesperson said.

The Infrastructure Gaps

For Bhatia, the problems go beyond the teething issues that might normally be expected at a new airport.

When he and other industry representatives met NMIA officials in 2025, the facilities were still being developed.

“When it’s not in a live environment, we would not understand what the pitfalls would be,” Bhatia said.

The industry had also flagged problems at Mumbai airport and hoped they would be addressed while building a new airport in Navi Mumbai. Some of those gaps, however, have been carried forward, according to Bhatia.

“For instance, there is no sterile area for pharmaceuticals, where high-value cargo can be opened if required by Customs. This facility is not available at Mumbai airport either and has been deferred to Phase II at Navi Mumbai. We had requested a large scanner for oversized cargo, like the one at JNPT port that can scan an entire container without opening it. That too has been pushed to Phase II,” Bhatia said.

For an airport being built from scratch, the industry had expected such facilities to be available from the beginning, irrespective of whether they were immediately used at full capacity.

But the problems are not limited to infrastructure.

Logistics companies already moving cargo through NMIA are dealing with delays while the airport and its ecosystem adjust to live operations.

“Honestly, we are taking it one day at a time, and we have done shipments from there. It is taking time; there is no doubt about it. As far as the clients are concerned, we are advising them that there are delays currently happening and that they need to anticipate the same. So, if the cargo goes into damage, then they have to accept the same,” Chaitaly Mehta, director at EKF Global Logistics, told The Core.

Shipments from NMIA are being delayed by more than 72 hours, especially imports, according to Mehta.

“Everybody needs to be patient, but everybody's also frustrated because the prices have gone up, and the damage is so high,” she said.

Mehta said even one of her own export shipments took around 12 hours to clear.

The problem for the logistics industry is that its customers cannot necessarily wait for the airport to settle down.

“It’s just that the industry doesn't slow down for anyone, right? And it doesn't stop. So, whether it is an airport or whether it is a human being, life doesn't stop, work doesn't stop, and it's still going to continue,” Mehta said.

The logistics company is in daily communication with the NMIA operator over the problems emerging on the ground.

“The NMIA team is listening. We are having a daily dialogue with them, and we are informing them in real time about the issues that are plaguing the industry and what is happening. They are trying their best to resolve it, but the issues are persistent,” Mehta said.

For logistics companies, however, the airport's learning curve has a direct impact on their customers.

Orders have to be delivered, payments have to be received and supply chains have to keep moving.

“Because they are not going to wait because orders are taking so long to materialise. There are millions of dollars worth online; credit is a problem, your remittances, your supply chain—then everything gets affected,” Mehta said.

The pressure ultimately falls on the supplier, even when the disruption is outside its control.

“And the most important thing is that the buyer is not going to give that much time to the shipper, stating, ‘Okay, I understand you have infrastructure issues in your city.’ The buyer is going to say, ‘I don't care. You took an order, you have to deliver it. If you can't deliver it, I'm not paying you the money, or I'm forfeiting the money and I'll go to somebody else.’”

“So, even if the agents want to have patience with the airport and their team, the suppliers will not have it,” Mehta said.

We have reached out to Navi Mumbai International Airport for its response and will update the story when we receive it.

The Bigger Airport Transition

The cargo disruption is unfolding against a much larger restructuring of Mumbai's airport network.

The immediate trigger is the redevelopment of Terminal 1 at Mumbai airport. T1, located in Santacruz, currently handles domestic operations, and its redevelopment requires the northern section of Terminal 1B to be demolished and reconstructed.

The affected section handles around five million passengers annually. Rather than shutting the entire terminal at once, the redevelopment is planned in phases, with around one-third of the affected domestic operations moving initially, followed by another one-third. The complete transition is expected by January 2027, while the new T1 is expected to be commissioned in 2029-30.

Airlines have questioned the proposed relocation of operations to NMIA and sought greater flexibility over which flights are shifted or discontinued.

For cargo operators, the transition is already having a more immediate commercial impact.

The Manchester-bound pharmaceutical shipment was booked to leave Mumbai on October 1. It is now expected to move through Ahmedabad, Dubai and London before reaching Manchester, with the journey taking longer and costing significantly more.

The Group Concorde spokesperson expects the disruption to ease.

“It was not the best way to have done it,” the spokesperson said. “But hopefully, it will be okay in the next couple of months.”

Mehta expects the teething troubles at the greenfield airport to persist for another six months to a year before operations stabilise. She said the current disruption should be temporary, as the situation would not be sustainable for the industry in the long run.