For the country’s main airports, the pandemic has become a thing of the past, at least as far as passenger traffic is concerned. In destinations such as Cancun , Tijuana and Los Cabos , the recovery of tourism has led to demand recovering at an exceptionally fast pace, with which airport groups enter the summer high season with strength.
Since the end of 2020, the recovery and even the growth of the airline sector seems to have recharged in the vacation and US market , a trend that continues to date.
The greatest example of this is reflected in the numbers of the Cancun International Airport , which in the first half of the year served 14.6 million passengers, 10.6% more than in the same period of 2019 , a growth that scales almost to levels of 11 % for the international market, of which the complex –operated by Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste ( Asur ) – is the largest recipient.
A similar trend has been seen at the Tijuana and Los Cabos airports. The complexes in charge of Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP) seem to benefit from their proximity to the US market, as is the case of the Tijuana Airport, which in the first six months of the year had 34.6% more passengers than in 2019, with which which closed the period with 5.77 million passengers.
In addition, the Los Cabos Airport registered 3.45 million passengers, a volume almost 19% higher than that registered before the pandemic.
This has been good news for airport operators, who have benefited from the high volumes of their flagship complexes.
“Asur is the airport group with the highest volume of passengers, as a result of a favorable operational recovery of traffic in complexes such as Cancun, with an increase in international traffic of 18.6% compared to June 2019, a higher figure compared to the average of the most important complexes in the country”, says Brian Rodríguez, a specialist at Monex Grupo Financiero, in an analysis.
For other airports, such as Tijuana, the increase in the flow of users crossing into the United States through the Cross Border Xpress (CBX) has been the biggest growth driver for the international segment, which shot up 40.1% during June.
“As we expected, GAP’s traffic performance during June maintains a significant recovery. We will remain attentive to the progress of the pandemic and the recovery in confidence in tourism both locally and internationally,” says Rodríguez.
However, not all of the country’s large airports have managed to recover pre-pandemic traffic. This has been the case of the Monterrey Airport , which with 4.7 million registered users in the first half of the year, is still at 9.6% of the flow served in the same period of 2019.
For José María de las Rivas, analyst at Intercam, this trend prevails in most non-holiday destinations in the country, as is the case of the airports operated by Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro-Norte (OMA).
“In the following quarter of the year, we will continue to see significant growth compared to 2021, and a sequential improvement in the 2020 comparisons. OMA will be the airport group that will take the longest to reach the levels of February 2020, due to the nature of its airports, which they are predominantly business,” he says in an analysis by the station.
As long as the dynamism of the domestic market and certain international tourism issuing destinations is maintained, the forecast is that the good numbers will continue.
“As of May, the annual accumulated arrivals technically equals what was registered in the same period of 2019, mainly due to the good run of the US and Colombian markets ,” says the Anáhuac Tourism Research and Competitiveness Center (Cicotur), in reference tourism served in the first five months of the year.
“Although the Canadian market has maintained a clear recovery trend, it presents the greatest negative difference compared to 2019 and its market share is slightly behind the group of South American markets,” he concludes.
