The Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation Ministry (SICT) has ordered a discount from 52 to 43 flights per hour on the Benito Juárez Mexico Metropolis Worldwide Airport (AICM) – a 20% discount – efficient Oct. 29.
In response to the airport’s saturation, the federal authorities had already enacted a “short-term” plan to cut back the variety of flights arriving and departing, from 61 to 52 per hour, in 2022.
In its Thursday assertion, the SICT stated “this measure might be short-term and can stay in place so long as the saturation situations at AICM persist” and that it’s essential to “safeguard the safety” of the airport’s customers and working employees. In response to a research carried out by the Federal Civil Aviation Company (AFAC), the utmost variety of passengers per hour that may be attended in an “optimum method” in every terminal had been exceeded over 25 instances this yr.
Nonetheless, the Nationwide Chamber of Air Transport (Canaero) has stated such an adjustment will result in “a large cancellation of flights” and “put the nation in an unfavorable scenario” at a global stage – a reference to Mexico’s quest to shed its hindering Class 2 aviation security ranking and return to a extra favorable Class 1.
“The essential drawback at AICM isn’t the capability of [flights] per hour, however the age of the infrastructure and [its state of] deterioration,” Canaero stated in its assertion.
A part of the issue is that aircraft sizes have elevated in the course of the previous 10 years, which suggests extra passengers are crammed into the airport at any given time.“The airport is congested not solely within the air however on the bottom, primarily with the saturation of the buildings,” stated Isidoro Pastor Román, the director of the brand new Felipe Ángeles Worldwide Airport (AIFA) north of Mexico Metropolis. “[AICM officials] are doing a research to see the best way to do [necessary] reworking and adaptation work in Terminal 1.”
If flight visitors at AICM is lowered additional, airways may select to maneuver flights to AIFA, Pastor added. “Within the Valley of México, the one house for progress in passenger demand — to satisfy extra demand and future progress — is AIFA,” he stated.
In September 2022, AICM and airways agreed to cut back the variety of licensed touchdown and takeoff instances (or slots) per hour, which reportedly led to Aeroméxico shedding a whole lot of slots per week. Nonetheless, whereas unauthorized takeoffs had been efficiently halted, different airways, comparable to Volaris and Viva Aerobus, continued to land at unauthorized instances, usually after hours.
New measures being evaluated by AICM would prohibit landings in unauthorized slots, that means that an incoming plane may very well be diverted to a different airport if they’ve been delayed by circumstances attributable to the airline, stated Carlos Ignacio Velázquez Tiscareño, director of AICM. Canaero is asking that any scheduling changes not be made unilaterally.
“We respectfully request that the authorities embrace consultants from the [airlines in a working group] to construct a method that permits fixing the wants of current and future demand, for the good thing about the financial and social growth of the nation,” Canaero stated in its launch.
A presidential decree went into impact to maneuver cargo flights from AICM to the brand new Felipe Ángeles airport (AIFA) earlier this yr. A report in Milenio in early August famous that 15 of 24 devoted cargo corporations working at AICM have already moved their flights to AIFA, and that the entire must be 100% by Sept. 1.
With reviews from Reforma, Expansión, El Economista and Milenio
