The state government is planning to operationalise both the runways at the proposed Navi Mumbai airport in the first phase of the project.

Senior officials said after a meeting, chaired by Chief Secretary Johny Joseph and attended by officials from the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), state urban development department, Konkan divisional commissionerate and the project consultants, on Monday that Joseph had directed both the runways to be operationalised in the first phase itself.

The officials said though the consultants were for opening one runway in the first phase, the Chief Secretary had said that the maximum capacity should be achieved in the first phase itself, instead of the 50 per cent as planned earlier, as the existing airport was saturated. “Instead of one runway and 10 billion passengers annually (at the end of the first phase), we will try to double that,” an official said.

Two 10-km runways, located a km apart, are proposed for the airport, and officials said the plans to construct the two runways at the same time made sense as a lot of concreting work is necessary in the first phase. If the work is taken up at one go, it will lead to economies of scale, and so will be “finished off at one go.”

The Centre had recently cleared the environment and Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) hurdles for the proposed 2,100-hectare Greenfield Navi Mumbai international airport, which will come up between Kharghar and Panvel . The state government has planned a time-bound implementation of the already-delayed project, with the basic services to be inaugurated in late 2013.

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