Project MAX has recently released their rendition of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (VABB) for Microsoft Flight Simulator, serving the Metropolitan Region of Mumbai, India. It’s the 2nd busiest airport in the country, with a yearly average of 49 million passengers, and the 41st in the World.

Mumbai International Airport was conceived as RAF Santacruz in the 1930s and played an essential role during World War 2 while housing several Royal Air Force squadrons. It covered an area of 610 hectares, with three runways. It saw the first bits of civil action in the late 40s when the RAF handed it over to the Director General of Civil Aviation, which had the RAF hangars converted into a passenger terminal. It was only a short time until they had to expand, with the construction of a new terminal sometime in the late 50s and new equipment that would allow nocturnal operations. 

The jumbo jet era brought even more traffic into the already constrained airport, with a terminal that could only handle about 600 passengers at the same time having to deal with twice that amount. It quickly became the most congested airport in the country, awarding it an honorable mention from Time magazine as a “black hole” rather than a terminal building. To make matters worse, the International section caught on fire in 1979, killing three people. The airport owners were urged to expand the structure with a 110 million rupee project expected to reach completion by 1981. Construction began in 1977, earning its end in late 1980. 

The airport saw further modernization work proposed in 2003, when it was already handling 38% of the country’s aircraft movement, rounding up at around 13.3 million passengers, leading to another congestion nightmare. A consortium won the bid to operate, manage, and modernize the airport, a process that happened progressively over the years.

It’s a hub for many Indian airlines, including Air India, AIX Connect, Vistara, Akasa Air, Go First, and IndiGo, offering a comprehensive domestic and international network. It’s visited by many carriers from all around the globe, with the most prominent being Air France, All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Cathay Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Finnair, KLM, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Turkish Airlines, and United Airlines.

The scenery features a detailed 3D model for the terminals, buildings, props, and landside buildings, detailed ground poly, custom ground markings, a detailed terminal interior, high-detail airside with ground service equipment and static aircraft, specular mapping and PBR on ground poly, dense fps-friendly custom autogen, bonus 3D scenery of VAJJ, night textures, and custom AFCAD.

It’s available on SimMarket for roughly $17.12, requiring at least 433.42 MB of free hard disk space to install.

Stay tuned to Threshold for more flight simulation news!

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