Although the six-year term of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), began with limitations for the air sector focused on the transportation of goods after the cancellation of the construction of the New Mexico International Airport (NAIM) in Texcoco, State of Mexico, the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) became the take-off platform for this segment, whose challenge for Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, virtual president-elect, is to improve the work of customs 50, in addition to increasing infrastructure and offering certainty to private initiative.
José Medina Blanc, general director of MEB Advisors , recalls in an interview with T21 that, failing to achieve an increase in passengers, as the federal government had planned, the dedicated air cargo was directed to the AIFA through a presidential decree, also supported by the reduction of operations at the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) .
“In terms of air cargo, a terminal was developed that cried out to be better than what it had, forget about where it is positioned, something that was good for this six-year term and not slowing down, is that we had better operating conditions than those in which they had in the AICM and that was what the foreign trade part was crying out for. What is more expensive to send to AIFA? Well yes, but it was much more expensive than stopping moving 50 to 60 tons of cargo on planes, because you couldn’t clear it through customs because it was saturated, than what it cost me to send it to AIFA, so that was one of the successes. Outside of that, a lot of time was lost in the degradation of the Category [of air safety by the United States government] and there is no global vision of connectivity as a country, an incentive for own or concessioned airports, there is no management global so that Mexico has an attraction in that sense,” he considers.
Juan Antonio José, independent aviation analyst, says that at the beginning of the federal administration there were serious limitations in the infrastructure for air cargo , but paradoxically with the AIFA and converting it into a cargo airport, quality facilities were offered to the segment and that it has contributed to it being detonated and handled more efficiently, the problem is that it is not optimized and shipments continue to be made outside of this terminal.
Comment and follow us on X:@evandeltoro / @GrupoT21
