Purandar Airport Finally Gets the Green Light: Inside the ₹17,000 Crore Mega Project

October 22, 2026 PuneTV Team 1 Comment

The Purandar International Airport has been a frustrating waiting game for Pune residents—announced, debated, delayed, and almost forgotten. But on October 22, 2026, the Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC) finally made a concrete move.

The state has issued a global tender for the techno-economic feasibility study and bid process management for the Chhatrapati Sambhaji Raje Greenfield International Airport. This is the clearest signal yet that Pune’s second airport—designed to relieve the choking constraints of the Navy-owned Lohegaon airport—is finally moving from political speeches into the planning pipeline.

Here is everything you need to know about the tender, the massive scale of the project, the land acquisition hurdles, and the reality of the timeline.

The Purandar International Airport Tender: What Exactly Is Being Planned?

The MADC tender, available on the Maharashtra e-tendering portal since October 22, seeks a consultant to handle two critical phases:

Part A (5 Months): A detailed techno-economic feasibility study. This includes forecasting passenger and cargo demand, preparing the airport master plan, estimating costs, and conducting environmental and social impact assessments. The consultant will also plan road, rail, and metro connectivity.
Part B (3 Months): Bid process management. This means drafting the concession agreement and selecting a private partner to develop the airport under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.

Key Dates: A pre-bid meeting is scheduled for November 4, 2026, and the last date for bid submission is November 18, 2026.

Eligibility: This is not for small players. The consultant must have completed a feasibility study for a Code E or larger greenfield airport in the last decade and must show an average annual consultancy turnover of at least ₹200 crore over the last three financial years.

The Scale: What Purandar Will Look Like

The planned Purandar International Airport is massive:

Land: Approximately 1,216 hectares (over 3,000 acres) across seven villages in Purandar taluka: Kumbharvalan, Vanpuri, Ekhatpur, Pargaon, Munjwadi, Khanwadi, and Udachiwadi.
Runways: Two parallel 4 km runways, designed to handle wide-body aircraft.
Capacity: Over 100 aircraft and an eventual capacity of 75 million passengers per annum, positioning it among India’s largest airports.
Investment: Estimated at approximately ₹17,000 crore for the full build-out. Phase 1 alone—a single runway and terminal with 5 million passengers capacity—is estimated at ₹4,500 crore.

The airport is explicitly designed to be Pune’s first dedicated civilian-only international hub, free from the operational restrictions that have capped Lohegaon’s growth for decades.

The Land Problem: 96% Consent, But a Stubborn 4%

No airport can be built without land, and Purandar International Airport’s land acquisition has been a decade-long saga.

By October 2026, the Pune district administration reported that 96% of farmers across the seven villages had agreed to hand over their land. The state government fixed compensation at ₹1.61 crore per acre, plus separate payments for trees, wells, and structures. Approximately ₹4,000 crore had already been credited to farmers’ bank accounts.

But there is a critical gap. While 96% of farmers have consented, only 76% of the actual land has been taken into possession. The remaining 40 hectares are concentrated in Pargaon, where a small group of farmers has refused to consent despite two deadline extensions.

What happens now: District Collector Jitendra Dudi has confirmed that the administration will use compulsory acquisition powers for the remaining 40 hectares. These landowners will not receive the additional benefits (including a 10% developed-plot concession) offered to those who consented voluntarily. The farmers had challenged the project in the Bombay High Court, but their petition was dismissed, clearing the way for compulsory acquisition.

Why Pune Desperately Needs This Airport

The existing Pune International Airport at Lohegaon is owned by the Indian Navy and operates under severe civilian capacity restrictions. The Purandar International Airport is designed to change that. It handles roughly 5 million passengers annually—far below what Pune’s IT, automobile, and manufacturing economy demands.

Purandar is designed to change that. The planned dedicated metro link from Pune Metro’s Phase 3 expansion, plus integration with the Bidkin Industrial City and the Pune-Mumbai Expressway corridor, positions the airport as more than an aviation facility. It is an economic catalyst for the underdeveloped southern periphery of Pune.

The Reality Check: Timelines Are Still Optimistic

The MADC tender is a real step forward, but it is important to be clear about what it is not.

This is a feasibility study tender, not a construction tender. The selected consultant will spend five months studying whether the project is viable, what it will cost, and how it should be structured. Only after that study, the PPP bidding process, and regulatory clearances will construction tenders be floated.

Some reports have cited a target of October 2027 for the first commercial flight. That timeline is extremely ambitious given that the feasibility study alone will take five months, followed by concessionaire selection and construction of a massive greenfield airport.

A more realistic assessment: the tender issued on October 22 is the starting gun for a multi-year process. If everything proceeds smoothly—a big “if” for infrastructure projects of this scale—construction could begin in late 2027 or 2028, with operations in the early 2030s.

What to Watch Next

November 18, 2026: The bid submission deadline. The quality of consultants bidding will signal how seriously the industry takes the project.
Pargaon land takeover: How smoothly the compulsory acquisition proceeds will determine whether the project faces further legal or political friction.
The feasibility study findings: Passenger projections, cost estimates, and connectivity plans will shape the final project scope.

For Pune residents tired of limited flight options and high fares, the Purandar tender is genuinely good news. It is the first concrete administrative action on an airport that has been discussed for over a decade. But it is a beginning, not an ending. The real test will be whether the MADC and the state government can maintain this momentum through the long, complex process of actually building an airport.

Also read : pune-property-market-october-2026

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