September 1, 2026 — 4:45pmA meeting with Air India looms as a major test for Premier Chris Minns as his government attempts to convince the airline to run direct flights from New Delhi or Mumbai to the new airport in western Sydney.Minns will on Tuesday meet with representatives from the carrier alongside Australia’s High Commissioner to India, Philip Green, as he seeks to convince them to expand their footprint to western Sydney, in what is shaping up as an important part of his four-day trade trip to the country.Premier Chris Minns during a visit to the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, a Sikh house of worship, in New Delhi. Michael McGowan“I’m hopeful [that] in the not too distant future, we’ll have more to announce in terms of Western Sydney Airport and Air India. But I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said.“That’s why this meeting is important. Part of the reason that we are both here on this delegation is so that we can hopefully convince Air India that we’re serious. We want them here.”While a previously scheduled meeting with carrier IndiGo was cancelled, Minns is still hopeful of landing a deal with Air India. To do so, the government is willing to pay out of an aviation attraction fund.Premier Chris Minns with his wife, Anna. The premier has highlighted a looming meeting with airline carrier Air India as an important test.Michael McGowanAir India flies some direct routes to Kingsford Smith Airport, but the government is keen to convince the carrier to expand to western Sydney, where many of the 200,000-odd Australians of Indian descent in NSW live.“Frankly, the Indian middle class is travelling, and we do want more of them coming to Sydney,” Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said.“We do want more of them coming to western Sydney … we’re a great destination. We have a big diaspora that’s going to anchor the traffic, regardless of any tourism fluctuations.”Minns is in India as part of a four-day trade trip. After two days in Delhi, he will fly to Mumbai late on Tuesday.The trip, which is taking place in the context of One Nation’s soaring vote and debates about migration, has offered Minns an opportunity to show his desire for investment from India while publicly showing his support for Australians of Indian descent, who loom as a crucial voting bloc ahead of the March election.Following a series of high-level meetings with the Modhi government in Delhi, the premier said he was buoyed by the appetite for investment from the country, including the country’s hunger for critical minerals, a resource he said could one day be “in the same ballpark” as coal exports.“They need to get their hands on it. It’s absolutely crucial for their manufacturing goals in India, and we’ve got it,” he said.NSW boasts huge deposits of minerals used in industries such as electric vehicle manufacturing and data centres. While Minns cautioned that huge quantities of minerals such as scandium, silver and cobalt under the ground did not necessarily mean it could all be extracted, it was potentially a trillion-dollar resource.“When I was first elected, we got a note from Treasury indicating there’s up to a trillion dollars worth of critical minerals under the ground in NSW,” he said.While coal was about double that, he said, the critical minerals offered an opportunity for NSW’s resources economy to diversify.“This is a growth sector for the NSW economy. It’s an opportunity for us to diversify away from coal, and also diversify away from one or two coal markets where we can sell to the rest of the world,” he said.As well as meetings with resource companies such as Hindustan Copper and Coal India, the premier also took part in the signing of an agreement between HCLTech and Transport for NSW’s Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System, or SCATS, an AI technology developed by public servants in NSW which helps co-ordinate traffic.Asked whether Delhi was the only city in the world which would appreciate having Sydney traffic brought to it, Mookhey replied: “Well, we haven’t been to Mumbai yet.”Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.More:NSW State ParliamentWestern Sydney InternationalSydney AirportCritical mineralsChris MinnsTradeIndiaFrom our partners