The story of the recovery of Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (Asur) began to be written shortly after the outbreak of the pandemic, and on various fronts. The Cancun International Airport has been the banner of a recovery that soon became growth for the concessionaire, hand in hand with an offer from the United States driven by a demand that the Mexican airlines were unable to fully meet due to the degradation of the Mexican aviation security to category 2.
This trend even led the Cancun airport to serve 2.8 million passengers in July, the highest level for a month in its history. But given the lifting of travel restrictions in several international markets, Alejandro Vales Lehne, Asur’s director of route and customer development, considers that these flows point to stabilizing towards the end of the year and the course of 2023. However, this it does not stop the airport group from hunting for new routes for its terminals.
While in 2020 national airlines were the engine of recovery and in 2021 international companies contributed to growth, in the short term the focus is on recently created companies , a trend that picked up after the reconfiguration of the air market due to the pandemic.
“There is a new airline called Norse [Atlantic Airways] . Arajet , which is also new, and Ultra Air ; all those airlines that are being born, that I see interesting potential, we are trying to attract them”, says the manager to Expansión .
“In the case of Arajet, it has already announced its new flight from the Dominican Republic, and of Ultra Air, recently William Shaw [general director] has just said that he is very interested in starting his flight to Cancun, even though the routes are very competitive. With the people of Norse we are also talking to see where they can operate, from an Oslo , a London . And, of course, more capacity is coming to lifelong customers, we are looking for ways to attract it”, he says.
The manager acknowledges that the downgrading of Mexico to category 2 by the Federal Aviation Administration in May 2021 contributed to a greater placement of capacity by US airlines; however, this increase is aimed at stabilizing in the face of new challenges in the aviation sector.
“An issue that can affect our growth, that it does not have a good pace, is that in the United States the airlines do not have crews, they would like to grow but there are no crews . That limits them a bit”, explains Vales Lehne. “We will have good growth at the end of the year and for 2023, but not at the percentage levels of this year.”
Beyond the new airlines, the potential to attract other players from more distant markets is slim. The manager refers that the planes to cover long distances are reduced, and the operating costs rise in the face of increases such as the price of fuel. Hence, no connections have been made from the Middle East beyond the Turkish Airways route between Mexico City and Istanbul , which has a stopover in Cancun.
“We have been working with the people of the airlines in the Middle East, with the case of Etihad Airways and Emirates for years, but it is complicated, we have not yet managed to have that. Turkish actually ate their errand. In the case of Emirates, most of its equipment is A380, it is an aircraft that would not serve them for this type of market due to its cost, the very range of the aircraft, etc., it would make them make a stopover as they do in Barcelona, then it makes the operation more expensive and complicates them.”
