Akasa Air Becomes the First Carrier to Operate from Guwahati Airport’s New Terminal

Akasa Air became the first airline to operate a flight from the newly inaugurated terminal at Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport, marking a major milestone in the evolution of civil aviation in Northeast India. The first flight of Akasa Air out of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai, landed on 22 February 2026, as per the reports of Economic Times. The new infrastructure, built by expanding the airport after a gradual validation test, is fully functional, which will assist in high standards of service and the broadening of routes in India in the high-growth northeast region.

Terminal Capacity & Features

The Guwahati Airport's new terminal greatly increases the number of passengers handled per year to 13.1 million passengers, almost doubling the annual handling capacity of the previous one. Designed by Guwahati International Airport Limited and run by Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL), the contemporary airport terminal is inspired by the cultural identity of Assam. It incorporates the state-of-the-art passenger processing systems such as Digi Yatra, embedded wayfinding, and centralised communications, as well as fully operationalised pre-operational trials of check-in, baggage handling, security, and aircraft turnaround. As per the reports of the Economic Times, the first service of Akasa Air that took off from Mumbai at 13:40 hrs and landed in Guwahati at 16:45 hrs was accompanied by a traditional lamp-lighting, and a special boarding pass was given to the first passenger. The return flight lifted off at 17:20 hrs, landing back in Mumbai at 21:10 hrs, illustrating efficient aircraft utilisation under the new terminal’s operational framework. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Jeet Adani, Director, AAHL, attended the event as it was an indication of the joint efforts by the government and the private sector to realise the expanded aviation infrastructure.

Strategic Relevance and Regional Processes

Passengers on the inaugural day described the transition as noticeably smoother compared to the previous terminal, citing faster security processing and improved boarding gate access, according to The Economic Times ground reportage. The Guwahati terminal project, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 20 December 2025, forms a key element of Assam’s broader economic and connectivity strategy, designed to support tourism, trade, and multi-modal integration across the Northeast. As its current operations serve 21 domestic destinations and three international routes (including Bangkok, Paro, and Singapore), the increased capacity and new layout of the terminal allow more frequencies and other possible new services.

Staged Reorganization and Realignment of Networks

As the operation has gradually transferred to the new terminal, the airport authorities have set a gradual plan of migration according to which the airlines will gradually move services until the complete transfer in the next few weeks, according to the Economic Times. Guwahati now manages more than 100 daily flight operations, and most of these operations are in the high-density trunk routes of Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, and also covers important Northeast routes like Imphal, Agartala, Dibrugarh, and Silchar. The increase in the apron area of the new terminal, further aerobridges, and modernized baggage systems is likely to result in less time taken by the aircraft to turn around and efficiency of the slots during peak mornings and evenings. In the case of carriers, this gives them room to operate on metro routes and reinforce intra-Northeast connectivity. The early shift that Akasa Air is making is thus timely when network realignment, slot optimisation, and schedule stability are the key to scaling the capacity out of the busiest airport in the region.