The Federal Government is preparing a decree to reduce operations per hour at the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) by 29%, which would go from the current limit of 62 flights per hour to a threshold of 48 to 50 flights, with the objective for airlines to place more flights at Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA).
According to Rogelio Jiménez Pons, Undersecretary of Transportation of the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT), the decree will arrive in the coming months, and work is being done in conjunction with the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC) and Services to the Navigation in the Mexican Air Space (Seneam).
“Right now we are doing a calculation; we have to start with cargo [flights], charters, with excessive flights, new airlines, in short, everything that is apparently superfluous, and then we start with all the airlines,” the official told the media. “We have to see how much can be allocated to other places, particularly AIFA, because it is ready, but Toluca, which worked very well, and other alternatives can also be opened.”
The eventual decree is put on the table two months after a declaration of saturation of the passenger terminals in the AICM was issued in the Official Gazette of the Federation.
Specifically, the saturation of Terminal 1 was declared between 5 and 10:59 p.m., and of Terminal 2 from 6:00 a.m. to 7:59 p.m., for which the AICM Schedules Coordinator was instructed to review and even modify the general bases for the assignment of landing and take-off times (or slots ) in airports in conditions of saturation.
However, Jiménez Pons warns that the current situation of the AICM goes beyond the issue of slots .
“The AICM is not saturated right now, it has already been saturated for more than 20 years (…) It is no longer just the problem of the slots , but that all the planes have increased in size. We started with 120 [seat] planes and right now we are with planes of over 200”, he said.
To attract more airlines to the AIFA, the transport undersecretary said that an incentive program is being worked on to motivate companies to place more flights in the new airport.
“We are going to search together, there we do have to ask the Treasury, the SAT (…) We would be seeing fuel discounts from ASA, we are looking for that scenario, but they are negotiations that take a long time. There are many things, it is a very broad topic, it involves the entire industry. We do not want to do anything forced, but we do want them to understand that there are already very serious conditions that must be addressed,” said Jiménez Pons.
What does the airline industry say?
Regarding a possible decree to move flights from AICM to AIFA, Cuitláhuac Gutiérrez, country manager of the International Air Transport Association (IATA, for its acronym in English), said that it has been discussed with the Government and many scenarios have been evaluated. .
“We believe that any decision made with the airport [AICM] will have an impact, and that there are alternatives that we can evaluate together in order to mitigate and reach a common goal,” he told the media. “Today we do not have a final decision, unless it has been notified to us, but we are aware and there is all the willingness of IATA and Canaero to be able to work with the Government.”
For the industry representative, the rate at which the maximum operations per hour are reduced could bring complications.
“It would be necessary to understand how to make that reduction; a total, direct reduction of 30%, well, it would be problematic, without a doubt, because it would be necessary to understand where these operations would be migrated to,” he said.
