Mexico City’s new international airport

Today, the Mexican government inaugurated the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (IATA code, NLU), north of Mexico City. The road has not been easy, and Mexico City, one of the largest metropolis worldwide, was well overdue to needing a new airport. But is NLU the answer? Mexico City’s new airport, a look The Felipe Ángeles International Airport is located 40 kilometers north of Mexico City. It was built inside the main military base in the country, and it now serves as a mixed military-commercial airport, with a focus on commercial. NLU is set to help desaturate the old Mexico City International Airport (MEX) and could –theoretically– receive up to 20 million passengers per year in the first phase of construction, delivered today. Nonetheless, on Day 1, NLU is far from the answer to help alleviate the pressure at MEX. NLU only has six daily national departing flights and one weekly international service to Caracas, Venezuela. Moreover, each of the domestic flights (operated by Aeromexico, Volaris, and Viva Aerobus) is also served from MEX, meaning they are duplicating the work without addressing new city-to-city pairs – not ideal. MEX’s current state In the meantime, MEX continues recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. As of January 2022, MEX had recovered 76.4% of its pre-pandemic traffic numbers. MEX has not bounced back from the crisis as many leisure-oriented airports across Mexico because it addresses a more business-oriented type of traveler and also serves as a connective hub. Despite not having bounced back to pre-pandemic traffic levels, the Mexican authorities decided to declare MEX as saturated. We discussed the topic a few weeks ago here. You can read the official declaration of saturation here. And they didn’t report the saturation in terms of flights per hour (as it usually happens); they declared it in terms of passengers inside a terminal per hour (again, despite MEX having not fully bounced back from the COVID crisis). Having MEX declared as saturated forces the airport authorities to apply special slot allocation rules, including prohibiting the saturation of landing and departures rights in the saturated hours. Take a look at MEX’s saturated hours in the last few months, according to the government. It leaves the airlines with not the best available hours to look for new flights. So what can the airlines do if they want to operate new flights and routes to Mexico City? For the Mexican authorities, it is simple: use NLU or Toluca International Airport. But is it really that simple? Is NLU going to work? Opening an airport with only a handful of flights and routes per day (all available as well from MEX) is not the best image. Despite that, the Mexican government is confident NLU will pick up and have 30 domestic routes in the second half of the year, five million passengers per year by 2023, and could soon have international airlines such as Delta and Copa announcing flights to NLU. It would be great news if that happened. It would be great news if NLU helps alleviate saturation from MEX and turns out to be a viable option for many travelers. Nonetheless, it has many challenges ahead. From ground connectivity to lack of appeal for international and national carriers, NLU has a lot of work to do before being a true hub for Mexico City. NLU needs to avoid becoming a commercial white elephant like Toluca (which, instead, is a powerhouse for private aviation, aviation schools, and cargo to some extent) if it wants to alleviate MEX’s saturation issues.

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