Mumbai's gateway, made simple
Two terminals, five kilometres apart, 55 million passengers a year and a metro line that finally reaches the door. Everything you need to move through India's busiest single-runway airport without a surprise.
What are you trying to do?
Nine out of ten questions about Mumbai Airport fall into one of these. Pick the closest and skip the rest.
Check a flight
Arrivals and departures with terminal, gate and belt, searchable by flight number, airline or city.
Open the boardFind my terminal
Which airline flies from where, what is on each level, and how to move between T1 and T2 safely.
Terminal guideGet into the city
Prepaid taxi, Cool Cab, auto or app cab — where each one waits and roughly what it costs.
Taxis & cabsTake the metro
Line 3 runs underground from both terminals to BKC, Worli and Cuffe Parade from ₹10.
Metro, train & busKnow how early to arrive
Two hours domestic, four hours international — plus DigiYatra, immigration and customs.
Travel guideWait comfortably
Lounges with walk-in access, a spa, sleeping pods and hotel rooms inside the terminal.
Lounges & restThe metro changed everything
Until October 2024, leaving Mumbai Airport meant committing to the traffic. Metro Line 3 — the Aqua Line — now runs fully underground from dedicated stations at both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2, all the way to Cuffe Parade at the southern tip of the city.
Cuffe Parade to the airport takes around 45–50 minutes for ₹50. The same journey by road at peak hour can take twice that and cost fifteen times more.
- Direct station at each terminal, no interchange needed
- Fares from ₹10 to ₹80 across the whole line
- Air-conditioned, and immune to the monsoon
Mumbai does airport retail differently
Forget competing with the Gulf hubs on watches and handbags. What Terminal 2 does better than almost anywhere is Indian — Ayurvedic skincare, handloom, mithai boxed for a long-haul, jewellery you cannot buy at home.
Six things people get wrong
T1 and T2 are not walkable
They sit on opposite sides of the runways, about 5 km apart by road. A free shuttle runs 24 hours from T2 Level 1 (P4) and T1 near Departure Gate 2 — carry both boarding passes. Allow 45–60 minutes.
The drinking age here is 25
Maharashtra sets its legal drinking age at 25, not 18 or 21 — and duty free enforces it. If you are 23 and expecting to pick up whisky on the way home, you cannot.
Auto rickshaws cannot reach South Mumbai
Autos are licensed to run roughly between Borivali and Bandra in the west and Sion in the centre. For Colaba, Fort or Churchgate you need a taxi, an app cab or Metro Line 3.
The allowance went up in 2026
Under the Baggage Rules 2026 the general free allowance is ₹75,000 for residents and ₹25,000 for foreign tourists. Most travel sites still quote the old ₹50,000/₹15,000.
There is no GST refund desk
India has no working tourist tax-refund scheme. The saving is built into prices at stores past immigration — so buy after immigration, not in the city, and do not go hunting for a refund counter.
Four hours, not three
The airport's own guidance is two hours before a domestic departure and four before an international one. Mumbai's kerbside and immigration queues make that realistic rather than cautious.
A peacock's tail, cast 8,500 times
The architects at SOM took the iridescent eye of a peacock tail feather as the motif for Terminal 2's coffered ceiling. Each coffer holds a lens with a disc of dichroic film that throws two different colours depending on the angle of the light.
Read about the roofIndia's largest public art collection is airside
The Jaya He GVK New Museum runs 3.2 kilometres through Terminal 2 across four levels — more than 5,500 artefacts and over a hundred installations by around 100 artists and 1,000 artisans, drawn from 28 states and reaching back to the 11th century.
It is also, quietly, one of the great frustrations of Mumbai's cultural life: you need a boarding pass to see any of it.
Art & architectureLanding soon?
Run through the arrival checklist — immigration, customs channels, what your allowance actually covers, and how to get from the belt to the kerb without losing an hour.