Category: Airports

The $2BN Airport Built in a Swamp

Video narrated and hosted by Fred Mills.

India is building its answer to Changi.

It’s called Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) and phase one of the project opened to passengers in December last year.

Once the final phase of work is complete, NMIA will welcome an astounding 90 million passengers a year, 20 million more than Changi.

Comparing any airport to Singapore’s jewel is cause for raised eyebrows – it’s arguably the best facility of its kind in the world. But remember, all airports start somewhere – Changi was a military airbase long before it became a world leading civilian facility.

However, the engineers behind Navi Mumbai could only dream of building on top of an airbase: their reality was entirely different. They were tasked with developing an airport on a swamp covered in unstable mud flats, a giant hill and a river flowing through the middle of it.

While the renders of Navi Mumbai International look spectacular, the airport’s location has been an absolute nightmare.

Above: A render of Navi Mumbai International Airport terminal 1. Image: Zaha Hadid Architects.

The Mumbai problem

India has one of the fastest growing aviation sectors on the planet, behind only China and the US.

The number of operational airports in the country has doubled in the last decade, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks to overhaul India’s travel infrastructure, and yet Mumbai, its financial powerhouse, is under-resourced.

A number of the world’s most prominent cities feature multiple major airports which is crucial for visitor numbers, business trips and cargo. As an example, London is serviced by six major airports.  All of those facilities combined handled a whopping 177 million passengers in 2024.

Mumbai, however, has historically had just one major airport.

That would be like London having just Heathrow; the city would miss out on nearly 100 million passengers a year and given India’s rapidly growing aviation sector, the country is desperate to improve capacity to its financial capital.

The answer that India’s authorities came up with was simple – a second major airport for Mumbai – but executing an idea of this scale is rarely as straightforward as having the epiphany itself.

The biggest problem faced by Mumbai’s second major airport plan is experienced by major cities around the world: space.

Mumbai Airport is already at capacity. Terminal 1 is going through a redevelopment but there isn’t a lot of scope for expanding the footprint. On every side, there are densely packed communities that would be a nightmare to move and it’s not like they didn’t try – the evidence is found at Terminal 2.

The concourses are asymmetrical. The initial plan was for them to be the same length but because of the challenges faced in moving communities on the airport boundary, the second concourse had to be redesigned.

Above: Mumbai Terminal 2 features a short second concourse because of the limited land space.

Aircraft traffic is also limited because of the intersecting runways. The design stops planes landing and taking off on each strip at the same time and as we’ve made clear, there’s very little space to build parallel runways elsewhere.

Mumbai is missing out on potentially millions of passengers and tonnes of cargo every year and the city’s key airport is crying out for help.

A major expansion is out of the question and so is any notion of developing another massive airport anywhere near the city centre – so where do you go?

Getting away from the city

Following a ten year search for a home for the new airport and a further three year process to buy land, officials ended up in Navi Mumbai, about 40 kilometres away from the old commercial centre of Mumbai.

In what has become a growing trend over the last decade, the Navi Mumbai International site is on the coast and it’s built on largely reclaimed land that required a lot of preparation.

Before any work could begin on laying the foundations in 2018, three key hurdles needed to be tackled:.

  • Ulwe Hill
  • Swamp land
  • Ulwe River
Ulwe Hill

Right in the middle of the site for the new airport was Ulwe Hill – 92 metres of solid rock. 

To create space and clear the air-path, it needed to be completely flattened before any building work could take place. Construction crews demolished 62 million cubic metres of rock through controlled blasting to protect the surrounding villages.

But what do you do with all of that blasted rock?

Swamp land

The material was repurposed. Hundreds of acres of this airport is constructed on swamp land, covered in mud flats and mangroves that needed to be levelled and stabilised.

To do so, they raised the ground by about six metres using the newly sourced rock. Teams blasted Ulwe Hill at specific explosive power designations to create rock fragments the ideal size for land development and reclamation.

The blasted rock was dumped into marshy areas, puncturing and displacing the soft clay. The weight of the rock compacted the soil to make it strong and in turn limited the amount of intensive treatment needed to thicken any remaining weak ground.

Ulwe River

Before site work began, Ulwe River cut right through its centre. Engineers were left with little choice but to completely reroute it.

The river was moved to the airport boundary, cut on a right angle to navigate around the site and it wasn’t just relocated: it was expanded.

Above: Ulwe River cut through the centre of Navi Mumbai International Airport site and so it was redirected.

NMIA is surrounded by villages whose people have watched this site completely transform but within those communities, there’s a very real concern about flooding.

Swamp and wetlands absorb water through the vegetation and soft soil but large swathes of that land have been filled in with non-absorbent rock, leaving villagers wondering where water will run during heavy rainfall. It’s why Ulwe River has been widened and deepened.

In some areas it’s grown from 25 metres wide up to an impressive 200 metres wide. The hope is that the larger river area will control excess water during floods.

Welcome to Navi Mumbai International

Following seven years of construction, the first phase of the airport opened on Christmas Day 2025 and features a control tower, a single runway, a fire station and terminal one.

Already, Navi Mumbai Airport is able to serve 20 million passengers a year and half a million metric tonnes of cargo but by the end of phase five in the 2030s, this airport will be unrecognisable.

The site will be enhanced with a second parallel runway, three more terminals and additional cargo capacity.

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, it’s modelled to resemble a lotus flower, the national flower of India.

The foundations are developed using high strength reinforced concrete and precast panels to speed up construction. It’s a really impressive accomplishment given the incredibly impractical site condition at the start of the process.

At the front, twelve columns shaped like unfolding petals diffuse light into the terminal as part of a striking two-tier system. Seventeen giant columns are then hidden behind them to take the incredible weight of the 370-metre canopy roof.

Above: Navi Mumbai International Airport is inspired by a lotus flower. Image: Adani.

The curved roof is created using a steel framework, supported by a network of steel girders and cladding. Each section acts like a petal, formed using large span rectangular steel trusses.

The trusses are capable of supporting great weight and in doing so, they limit the number of interior structural columns. The goal was to create a beautiful, open space with natural light flooding through the sky lights.

But those curves in the roof are about a lot more than just giving passengers something pretty to look at. They actually catch and channel monsoon rainwater, while reducing wind resistance.

What’s the problem?

Understandably, moving away from the hustle and bustle of central Mumbai offers room to play with but what makes less sense is the very limited travel infrastructure leading to this now open and active airport.

A new network of roads has been built but for the time-being but there’s no rail access. There are reports the mobile connectivity is pretty poor so communicating with app-based transport systems is a real challenge and the taxi system is facing delays.

A metro line is planned between the old airport and Navi Mumbai International but that won’t be ready for a number of years.

The one silver lining is the impressive Trans Harbour Link, the country’s longest sea bridge opened in 2024, connecting Mumbai with Navi Mumbai.

But the journey to the new airport by car can take up to three hours from some suburbs of Mumbai and that’s the last thing you need ahead of hopping on a long haul flight.

Navi Mumbai International isn’t the first airport to face teething issues after opening (and it absolutely won’t be the last) but following a decades-long wait for Mumbai to open a new airport, it feels slightly rushed.

The search for a building site found swamp land with a giant hill and a river flowing through its centre and now, the airport has opened without any rail access.

Although let’s be clear, we’re still at phase one of the project. Navi Mumbai International has an incredibly exciting future and it looks like one of the world’s fastest growing aviation economies could be about to reach new heights.

Metro Atlanta’s next autonomous vehicle project has broken ground

Free automated network near ATL airport called “one of the region’s most innovative transit projects”

Another autonomous vehicle test project is officially en route, this time on the southern fringes of ITP Atlanta. 

ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts officials broke ground last week on a long-planned Automated Transit Network Demonstration Pilot program, marking what project leaders called a major milestone for “one of the region’s most innovative transit projects.”

The pilot project calls for a free, public, on-demand ATN network that will stretch for ½ mile along a dedicated guideway, linking the ATL SkyTrain at the Georgia International Convention Center to the Gateway Center Arena. 

The project will use technology from Glydways, a California-based self-driving vehicle developer. 

Example of a Glydways vehicle bound for the 1/2-mile route on the southside. Glydways/ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts

The possibility of autonomous shuttles, buses, or pods zipping around near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has been explored for years. That push echoes alternative-transportation projects underway elsewhere in the metro, such as Cumberland’s forthcoming CAM Network and the Beltline-supported Beep project in Southwest Atlanta. 

Near the airport, the goal of the ATN Demonstration Pilot is to showcase the capacity, scalability, and capabilities of such a system in real-world environments, according to project officials. 

Gerald McDowell, AACIDs executive director, said in an announcement the pilot will provide “an innovative mobility solution for the future of transportation in our region.” Chris Riley, Glydways chief commercial officer, said the project “will demonstrate how our technology can be scaled and replicated in other communities, creating safe, cost-effective transit options across the country, and globally.”

The 1/2-mile pilot project is scheduled to open for public use in December. 

Plans for the pilot Glydways route in relation to Georgia International Convention Center.Courtesy of ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts

Expansion beyond the initial route will hinge on a feasibility study led by MARTA that’s currently underway. Analysts will be closely monitoring the pilot project’s performance, scalability, and system capacity to determine if expansion to other south metro points of interest is feasible, per AACIDs leadership. 

AACIDs, a self-taxing district of commercial property owners, comprises the Airport West CID and the Airport South CID and covers a 15.7-mile area across Fulton and Clayton Counties and several cities, including portions of Atlanta, East Point, Hapeville, South Fulton, College Park, and Forest Park. 

A rendering illustrating Glydways functionality at the convention center stop on ITP Atlanta’s southside.Courtesy of ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts

A future alternative transit connection between the airport’s domestic and international terminals could also be in the works, AACIDs officials have said. 

The logic goes that the service could help solve a primary complaint from international passengers—that connecting to MARTA from the international terminal is too difficult, or what Glydways officials have called a “missing link.”

Why Asia is Getting Another Mega Airport

Video hosted by Fred Mills

SOUTHEAST ASIA is in the midst of one of the most expensive races on the planet.

Well over a hundred million people visited the region last year and that number is climbing rapidly. Several countries are vying to become the mega-port for the region which means billions of dollars are being invested into building some of the biggest airports we’ve ever seen.

But Vietnam’s Long Thanh might just be the most ambitious gamble of them all.

It’s costing an eye-watering $16 billion USD and spans across an enormous 5,000 hectares of land – that’s more than four times the size of London Heathrow. But why is Vietnam building such a massive airport and at such an extortionate cost, will it pay off

Above: Once complete, Long Thanh Airport will be one of the biggest travel facilities in the world.

Southeast Asia is in demand

Over the next twenty years, Boeing predicts air traffic to Southeast Asia is going to more than triple and while we all know someone who’s backpacked to the region, the numbers go way beyond westerners looking to expand their horizons.

China’s growing middle class and an increasing number of tourists travelling from emerging markets like India means Southeast Asia has experienced a rapid surge in holidaymakers.

But while America has Denver and Europe has Heathrow, the race is on to become Southeast Asia’s next mega-port.

There’s some stiff competition, none more so than Changi in Singapore which has a huge head-start. 

It’s already the largest airport in the region welcoming 60 million visitors a year and is regularly referred to as the best airport in the world but seemingly, that’s not enough. 

$10 billion is being plunged into building a swanky new terminal: T5. Once complete in the mid-2030s, overall capacity could hit a staggering 150 million.

Above: Changi in Singapore is often referred to as the best airport in the world.

In a bid to keep up, Malaysia’s looking to expand its Kuala Lumpur International to welcome 150 million people each year.

Over in Thailand the nation’s key air hub, Suvarnabhumi is going through a redevelopment to up capacity to 120 million and the Philippines is building New Manila International, a whole new $14 billion airport that could welcome 100 million people every year.

However, while we could easily focus our attention on any of these airports individually, it’s Long Thanh in Vietnam that has caught our attention.

It’s going to be a colossus. Once complete, it won’t just be the biggest airport in the region but one of the largest anywhere on the planet and for a meaty $16 billion dollars, you’d hope so.

Above: Long Thanh Airport will feature four terminals and four 4,000 metre long runways. Image: ADP Ingénierie

Vietnam’s Long Thanh gamble

There are two key reasons Vietnam is building Long Thanh and the first is to do with Tan Son Nhat Airport, 40 kilometres away.

40 million people travel through its terminals every year and while it’s nowhere near the 100 million figure being talked about for Long Thanh, it’s enough to cause a problem.

Tan Son Nhat is oversubscribed and because of its location, there’s no room to expand. Just like Chicago O’Hare or London City Airport, this airport is built right in the middle of a city.

Tan Son Nhat is in the bustling Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s most populous city and it’s surrounded by urban development, leaving the airport hemmed in.

Meanwhile, Vietnam’s tourism industry is booming. The country’s experiencing a near 30% increase in international visitors and so now is the perfect time to expand infrastructure.

Above: Tan Son Nhat Airport is oversubscribed and can’t expand due to its location. Image: Mkckim

Long Thanh may be the solution but this is a whole lot more than just an overflow facility. The plan is to make it the hub of international travel in Southeast Asia.

Once complete, it’ll feature four beautiful, lotus inspired terminals – Vietnam’s national flower – and they’ll be serviced by four gigantic runways, with each measuring 4,000 metres.

The development is being broken up into three phases. Long Thanh is being constructed on a forested area and so during phase one the early focus was clearing and site levelling before any actual building.

In late 2018, it was reported nearly 2,000 vehicles and machines were on site carrying out extensive earthworks including digging, filling and rolling across the entire span of the airport boundaries – a truly monumental effort.

Once the site was deemed ready, the path was laid for construction on the first of the terminals, runways and a control tower.

That first terminal itself spans 373,000m², spread across four floors. The structure and its attached wings are comprised of a steel frame, supported by reinforced concrete columns and beams.

Then above is a spectacular clear span design roof stretching 82 metres. A clear span roof is a ceiling not supported by masses of internal columns and posts, used to create open and breathable spaces on the ground.

The roof is made up of thousands of tonnes of steel, combining to create five layers. Each layer joins with the next to insulate, waterproof and increase the durability of this crucial element and when you look out from the terminal, you can see concrete has already been poured for the first 4,000 metre long runway.

Above: Long Thanh Airport’s first terminal features four floors spread across 373,000m².

Beyond that, to organise the entire site once operational, a 123 metre tall control tower, shaped like a lotus bud is being raised. But if you want to get in to see all of this, you’ll have to navigate the 8,668 metre boundary wall, constructed to lock off the Long Thanh Airport site.

By the end of phase one, the airport will be ready to welcome 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo per year.

Another two terminals and a further runway will be constructed in phase two but it’s the final phase where Long Thanh makes the leap to becoming a world leader.

With the construction of a fourth and final terminal and two more 4,000 metre runways, Long Thanh will become one of the world’s biggest airports.

Capacity will jump to a whopping 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of cargo per year, rivalling the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield Jackson in Atlanta.

A new road network and two rail lines will then connect the site to Ho Chi Minh.

A turbulent journey

As with any major infrastructure project the construction of Long Thanh hasn’t come without its problems and perhaps the most impactful faced so far is dust.

The clouds emanating from Long Thanh are brutal. The site sits on red basalt soil and when it’s disturbed, it sends dramatic plumes of colourful dust skywards.

They’ve spread far and wide, carried by the wind and on the wheels of the thousands of vehicles coming to and from the site and so residential areas up to seven kilometres away have been covered.

As a result, people have been experiencing breathing problems, with some residents saying the coughing is worse than at the height of the pandemic.

It’s not just the health implications either – crops have been caked in dust and if they can’t photosynthesise, they can’t grow and so quickly die off. As you can imagine, the government is being slated for a lack of preparedness.

When action was finally taken, it was already far too late. Reservoirs were built by the site to water down the ground and speed limits were imposed on vehicles to limit the spread of dust but that didn’t completely fix the issue and a lot of the damage had been done.

But even before work had begun, people were concerned about one thing in particular: the cost. There’s no denying the terminals will be visually remarkable but they don’t come cheap.

To realise the lotus themed design, the structure has to feature a serious number of curves but curved architecture is a lot more expensive to produce than right angles.

Rounded shapes are very technical and work intensive to engineer – beyond the fiddly geometric calculations, certain materials just don’t like to bend. Concrete becomes more brittle in a rounded shape and when it comes to steel, the thicker it is, the harder it is to manipulate because of its density.

You also tend to waste more material when building curves – so all in all, it’s a lot of work for a costly payoff.

Above: The Long Thanh Airport terminals are inspired by Vietnam’s national flower, a lotus. Image: Arup

While Vietnam might now be one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia, when the airport was proposed in 2006, it was in a very different landscape. The nation was near the beginning of its journey to economic growth.

Trade was increasing and poverty was in decline but residents worried the long-term debts loaded onto the government through loans for Long Thanh could set the nation back.

Today, while Vietnam is continuing its financial evolution, there are still concerns over the massive price-tag attached to this airport.

Does Vietnam need Long Thanh Airport?

In the first quarter of 2025, the country recorded the sixth-highest growth in international arrivals worldwide – that’s a massive 30% rise from the same period in 2024 and ranks Vietnam as top-dog in the Asia-Pacific area.

When you couple that with Boeing’s prediction for a tripling of air traffic to the region, it’s clear there’s travel demand.

The glaring problem is that there are already some big airports in the region that are expanding from a position of strength and while it would be naive to suggest Long Thanh is being built based on anything but meticulous market research, it does feel like a gamble.

However, the people of Vietnam can take comfort in the expansion approach. Long Thanh is being developed in stages, allowing the government to monitor capacity and passenger demand with each phase of work and after all, every great airport started somewhere.

So who’s going to win the race to become Southeast Asia’s next mega-airport?

The safe money would say Changi. It’s already the region’s kingpin and will likely finish its redevelopment long before Long Thanh ever reaches its full potential but given what we know about Southeast Asia’s rapid growth, who’s to say the region could only host one successful mega-hub?

It could go on to become renowned as the world’s centre of aviation and while Long Thanh may not win the race to become its forerunner, don’t discount its potential to become one of the world’s next airport giants.

Zaha Hadid, Adjaye, and others answer Dulles redesign open call

Daniel Jonas Roche

Requests for Information Responses (RFIs) by international architects and developers for a proposed revitalization of Washington Dulles International Airporthave landed. The submissions for the Washington, D.C. airport’s redesign follow a call from U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to redesign the main hall and control tower, designed by Eero Saarinen.

Preservationists have taken issue with the open call; members of Docomomo DCand the Art Deco Society of Washington, D.C. both submitted comments opposing the revitalization. The Airline Pilots Association, Int’l, a union, also submitted commentarywith recommendations that the project adhere to TSA and FAA regulations, as well as Department of Homeland Security guidelines.

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) and Bermello Ajamil & Partners, a New York office, were among the offices who submitted proposals to Make Dulles Great Again, as the initiative has been dubbed. AECOM, Grimshaw, Adjaye Associates, RCGA+DM Architects, and ZDS Architecture & Interiors have also answered the open call.

Two infrastructure groups Amtrak recently shortlistedto redesign Penn Station, Macquarie Capital and Fengate Capital, have also responded to the open call. Here are a few of the submissions.

Option A in the proposal by Zaha Hadid Architects would create a new terminal sandwiched between the Saarinen terminal and metro station. (Courtesy U.S. DOT)

Zaha Hadid Architects and Bermello Ajamil & Partners

The proposal to Make Airports Great Again by ZHA and Bermello Ajamil & Partners cozies up to the President’s ego, showing the building named Donald J. Trump Terminal. (Senator Bernie Sanders and other elected officials earlier this month proposed legislationthat would forbid sitting U.S. presidents from naming federal buildings after themselves, so this title may be out of the question.)

The deck ZHA and Bermello Ajamil & Partners submitted is also aesthetically similar to White House Executive Orders, namely the fonts and slide colors.

The Saarinen terminal would be repurposed as a shopping mall, as part of the joint proposal. ZHA and Bermello Ajamil & Partners presented three options for terminal relocation.

Option A entails a new headhouse immediately north of the Saarinen terminal. The Saarinen terminal would be visible from an elevated pedestrian walkway connected to the metro station, however other sight lines of the Saarinen terminal would be blocked.

Option B would deliver a new headhouse south of the Saarinen Terminal, and Option C would build a new midfield terminal.

The Zaha Hadid proposal would repurpose the Saarinen terminal as a shopping mall. (Courtesy U.S. DOT)

Patrik Schumacher of ZHA is simultaneously designing the Navi Mumbai International Airport for Narendra Modi’s far-right government in India. Schumacher presented ZHA’s design for the airport, as well as his own ideological predilections, last fall at Baylor University, as reported by AN.

The Adjaye Associates and RCGA+DM proposal

Adjaye Associates is partnering with RCGA+DM on its Dulles bid. This team did not submit renderings showing a proposal. Rather, Adjaye Associates touted past projects it designed in Washington, D.C. like Frances Gregory Library and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The design approach by Adjaye Associates and RCGA+DM would emphasize “clear and intuitive terminal organization, reinforcing logical passenger movement and reducing reliance on signage,” “flexible terminal and concourse planning,” and “architecture defined by openness, daylight, and structural clarity.”

The proposal by Grimshaw would relocate terminal functions from the Saarinen-designed hall to a new building closer to the metro station. (Courtesy U.S. DOT)

The Grimshaw proposal

Grimshaw has teamed upwith Ferrovial, a self-described global operator of sustainable infrastructure. Renderings by Grimshaw show tensegral columns supporting a curved roof.

The proposal by Grimshaw would deliver a new terminal hall adjacent to the Saarinen terminal. Like the ZHA proposal, this one by Grimshaw seeks to relocate the terminal north of the Saarinen terminal, creating shorter walks from the metro station. Grimshaw also proposed repurposing the Saarinen terminal as a “commercial and social destination.”

The new terminal would have a curved roof supported by tensegral columns. (Courtesy U.S. DOT)
In the Grimshaw proposal the Saarinen terminal would be repurposed as a commercial center. (Courtesy U.S. DOT)

Grimshaw also proposed a “new airport city development” surrounding Dulles. Ferrovial likewise touted its renovations at both London’s Heathrow Airport, Barajas Airport in Madrid, and at JFK International Airport in New York, among other completed projects.

The AECOM proposal

AECOM did not share renderings in its RFI, however it did emphasize its commitment to “developing a new terminal on a greenfield or brownfield site and implementing Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s long‑term master plan for the airfield.”

Architecturally, AECOM envisions maintaining the Saarinen-designed terminal “for revenue‑generating uses” instead of performing terminal functions.

A construction timeline for the project wasn’t issued, however U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy did say he wants the massive infrastructure project to move “at the speed of Trump.”