Mexico City, Mexico — Flights in and out of the Mexico City International Airport will be adjusted to generate more air activity at AIFA. Mexico’s Undersecretary of Transportation said that about 11 flights per hour will be eliminated from the Mexico City International Airport and transferred to the Aeropuerto Internacional Felipe Ángeles (AIFA).
In turn, the government wants the Treasury to provide tax incentives to the airlines that use AIFA. During his announcement, Rogelio Jiménez Pons, Undersecretary of Transportation, reported that the government will publish a decree to reduce operations of the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) from 61 to only 50 arrivals and departures per hour.
The intention is to reduce the saturation of the capital’s airport while bringing more flights to Santa Lucía. The decree, which is expected to be published in a couple of weeks, will prevent charter flights, official operations and other regular commercial flights from operating at the Mexico City International Airport.
“It is a decree that will allow us better operating conditions. I calculate that we are talking (…) between 48 and 50 flights per hour that would remain in the AICM”, detailed the official.
Initially, the intention is to reduce operations in the AICM by about 20 percent, but in the long term, the government intends to cut flights in the capital’s airport by up to 30 percent.
Cuitláhuac Gutiérrez, head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Mexico, said that a 30 percent reduction at the AICM would be problematic for airlines.
The general director of the National Chamber of Air Transport has said that the airlines have spoken with the government to draw up a plan to reduce saturation at the capital’s city’s airport.
“The scenario of reducing 30 percent is complicated. A total and direct reduction would be problematic. It is necessary to understand where the operations are migrated to, the airlines are going to operate their flights where they generate profits,” Gutiérrez said.
Currently, the Mexico City International Airport is authorized for 61 operations per hour, 58 of them from commercial airlines and three from government flights.
With the decree, charter flights and gradually cargo flights, will have to leave the Mexico City airport. The government is proposing that these flights be distributed between Santa Lucía and Toluca, which have few flights and a joint infrastructure to receive 28 million passengers a year.
Jiménez Pons said that Viva Aerobus, Volaris and Aeroméxico have already been notified about the decree.
