Concerned over the growing congestion at the Mumbai airport, the Civil Aviation Ministry is seriously considering building a third airport in Mumbai within a year.

In a brief technical study of an old defence airstrip in Thane, the Airports Authority of India has indicated that an airport can be made in this timeframe.

To be sure, the ministry has asked for a proper feasibility study to be carried out of this approximately 1,600-acre area near Kalyan in Thane district where a runway of about 6,000 feet exists and additional land can be acquired without much difficulty.

The idea, sources said, is to build a basic airport within a year so that traffic can be diverted from Mumbai until the Navi Mumbai Greenfield airport comes up.

The airstrip, however, is under defence control, so what is being planned is a civil enclave.

Sources said the ministry will soon start consultations with the Defence Ministry on the proposal but before that it needs to resolve a key technical issue. Given that the GVK consortium will lose revenue if traffic gets diverted to this third airport, the ministry will need to hold consultations with the consortium before arriving at any decision.

The consortium already enjoys the first right of refusal for the Navi Mumbai airport and should technically be given some benefit from this project too. While these issues need to be sorted out, the big picture is that the Navi Mumbai airport will take at least another five years to come up given that the bidding process is yet to start.

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