Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport traces its origins to the early 1940s, when RAF Santacruz was built as a wartime airfield. Civil aviation took over after Indian independence, and the airport grew into the country's principal international gateway. A dedicated international terminal at Sahar opened in 1981, separating overseas flights from the older Santacruz domestic facilities. The airport was renamed after the seventeenth-century Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji in 1999, with "Maharaj" added in 2018.
Modern transformation came after a public-private concession in 2006 led by GVK. Its centerpiece, the dramatic Terminal 2 designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill with a coffered roof inspired by the peacock, India's national bird, opened in 2014 and consolidated international and full-service domestic operations. The terminal houses "Jaya He," a multi-story art wall regarded as one of the largest public art programs in the world.
Hemmed in by dense city on all sides, the airport operates crossing runways that cannot be used simultaneously, making it one of the busiest single-runway-operation airports on earth. In 2018 it recorded more than 1,000 movements in a single day. The new Navi Mumbai airport across the harbor is being built to relieve it.