Landing at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport

What BOM is like

Mumbai is India's business capital, so a large share of the people around you have flown in for two days of meetings and will fly out again. The international terminal is a multi-level building that routes you up and down rather than straight ahead, and the art along its walls genuinely slows people down. What makes it different from other Indian airports is that the city wraps around it on almost every side, so you step out of the building and into traffic immediately. There is no long approach road to ease you in.

On arrival

Turn the line on the moment the wheels touch, because the arrivals route drops through lifts and escalators where signal thins for a stretch. The building is wide and the immigration queue can be long on the late-night bank of flights when several land together. Past baggage reclaim you come out to a concourse where metered taxis, pre-booked cars and app pick-ups are all handled in different places, and since those arrangements are periodically rearranged, follow the airport's own signs rather than a memory of last time. If you land very late and someone is meeting you, agree on a precise spot before you board, because finding a person in that crowd at two in the morning is no fun. A line that works before you leave the hall is what makes any of that fixable.

How far the airport Wi-Fi gets you

The terminal Wi-Fi works, but throughput visibly sags when the night bank of arrivals lands together, and the free session is time boxed rather than open all night. The other place people stumble is changing levels between reclaim and the exit: the connection drops and you are asked to authenticate again. If you happen to be typing to a driver at that moment, losing the thread mid sentence is a real problem rather than a small one. This is the airport where having your own line live before you leave the building saves the most aggravation.

Getting into town

The distance to the central business districts is modest, but the travel time swings from half an hour to well past ninety minutes depending on when you leave and whether it is raining. Most people take a car, either from the airport's own taxi queue or through an app. Your map will re-route repeatedly, because the coastal roads and the elevated stretches behave completely differently hour to hour. During the monsoon, add time and add data for checking conditions along the way, since a flooded junction changes the plan entirely. That first ride into town typically consumes 300 to 600MB with the map open and a few exchanges with the driver.

What people ask about this airport

• Fix the meeting point before you fly — A lot of flights into Mumbai land in the small hours, which is when the exit concourse is at its most crowded.
• Budget for the monsoon — In the wet months the ride into town can double in length, and you will be checking the route far more often than usual.
• Thin signal on the level changes — Between reclaim and the exit the connection can stutter in the lifts and escalators, so wait for the open concourse before confirming a booking.