Cancun, Q.R. — In March, destinations such as Los Cabos, Mazatlán and Cancun exceeded the passenger levels of 2019, and in some cases, registered historical figures.
During March, the arrival of passengers from the domestic segment to the airports of Mazatlán, Los Cabos, Tijuana and Cancun grew not only compared to last year, but even exceeded the levels registered in the same period of 2019, before the pandemic began.
Tijuana, whose airport has had one of the fastest recoveries since the outbreak of the pandemic, and which last month served almost 536,000 passengers, reported an increase of 8 percent compared to the same period two years ago.
In relative terms, the airport that grew the most during the period that coincided with Easter was Mazatlán, which served 21 percent more domestic passengers than in 2019, while the Los Cabos airport had a growth of 1 percent.
According the airport managing company ASUR, significant growth was also registered with the Cancun International Airport, which, with an arrival record of 692,686 passengers, registered a historical maximum for the month of March in the domestic segment, exceeding 2019 levels by 5 percent.
A greater recovery was foreseeable because March 2020 is considered a ‘hybrid’ month by the industry, since it was when the health contingency began in Mexico, creating a wave of flight cancellations mainly in the second half of the month.
“It is worth noting that several airports in domestic traffic registered growth. It is important to mention that on March 15 of last year, the mitigation measures began, so the comparison was relatively easy to overcome,” said Alejandra Marcos, Intercam’s director of analysis reported in a document.
Some growth was also recorded in the international segment, although it was in airports with comparable low levels. This was the case of Hermosillo, which served around 7,400 passengers in March, an increase of 40 percent compared to 2019, when it received 5,300 users.
Other airports that had growth in the international market compared to 2019 were Ciudad Juárez (35 percent), Los Mochis (20 percent) and La Paz (13 percent), although with passenger levels that ranged between 600 and 1,800 users.
By airport group and compared to 2020, ASUR and GAP registered increases of 17.8 percent and 10.6 percent in the domestic market.
In April, Quintana Roo governor Carlos Joaquin said the Cancun, Riviera Maya region was anticipating the arrival of more than 635,000 visitors for the two-week Easter holiday season. That figure was derived from the number of hotel reservations around the state.