Is Mexico City's new airport up to the job?: Travel Weekly
On March 21, Mexico City welcomed a new airport — a project started by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that replaced the original multibillion-dollar airport project designed by the previous administration. The airport, Felipe Angeles Airport, was opened with the intention of alleviating some of the overwhelming traffic at Benito Juarez Airport. But now that the new airport is here, many are wondering if it actually will fulfill its purpose.
Felipe Angeles Airport is the replacement plan for what was meant to be a $13 billion project designed by the previous administration. Lopez Obrador scrapped that plan a third of the way through its construction because of alleged corruption embedded within the project. His administration rushed to complete the project, which is one of four signature projects in Lopez Obrador’s plan for his presidency.
“I laugh because when I said on the 21st of March the airport would be ready, our adversaries said it wouldn’t be possible,” Lopez Obrador said in his airport inauguration speech. The speed with which it opened, and the lack of details surrounding it, has left many in the dark. Several of the advisors I reached out to had no information on the airport and were skeptical that it would have any sort of positive impact.
While the new airport, located in Zumpango, was cheaper than that originally planned (at about $4 billion) and was built to work in conjunction with Benito Juarez, which received 36 million passengers in 2021, the airport’s ability to do ease congestion is being questioned. Currently, the airport has only a few domestic flights, with passengers from Monterrey, Villahermosa, Guadalajara, Cancun and Tijuana. The only international flight is one to Caracas, Venezuela. The Los Angeles Times reported that about 2,000 passengers used the new terminal on inauguration day.
Furthermore, the new airport is about an hour from Mexico City, without traffic, so realistically we are looking at a two-hour drive at the minimum. While road and rail links are part of the plan to make the airport more accessible, the airport opened before that infrastructure was finished.
Lopez Obrador told the Associated Press that the new terminal is, at the moment, more popular among cargo flights. This, he said, will help the situation at Benito Juarez, which is also congested with cargo traffic. When it comes to easing the situation on commercial flights, the president said, “It is just a question of the airlines increasing their flights.”
According to the Associated Press, Lopez Obrador’s administration said that any new flights that want to access Mexico City will have to go through the new Felipe Angeles airport. But without a convenient way to get to the airport, this may deter passengers from choosing those airlines, opting for the much more convenient Benito Juarez.
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