Amid doubts, Mexican president inaugurates new airport

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurated a new airport on Monday to serve the capital, more than three years after scrapping a $13 billion private air terminal that the previous government began building and described as a symbol of corruption.

The military base north of Mexico City that López Obrador has converted into the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) – named in honor of a soldier of the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century – will start with a handful of flights and without connection railway, estimated for 2023.

The airport, located about 45 kilometers north of the capital, in the adjoining State of Mexico, is the first of the president’s main infrastructure projects to be launched and aims to alleviate congestion at the Mexico City International Airport. (AICM).

“This work was done despite the resistance of groups of created interests and also of those who wanted it to go wrong for us, even for the country to go wrong so that the government I represent could be shown,” López Obrador said on Monday, during his morning press conference, from the airport.

The terminal was built despite criticism from business groups that had backed the partially built airport canceled by López Obrador a few weeks before he took office in December 2018.

After a controversial referendum he promoted in October, the president abandoned the unfinished airport in Texcoco, some 30 kilometers east of the capital, arguing that the project was riddled with corruption, geologically flawed and too expensive.

The decision rattled financial markets and set the tone for an often contentious relationship with businessmen.

The government shelled out $1.8 billion to pay Texcoco bondholders, adding to the sunk costs at the canceled airport, which the president called “pharaonic.”

He then put the Mexican military in charge of building the new terminal, which, by 2023, is expected to carry five million passengers. In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, the AICM transported a record 50.3 million passengers.

Mexico is considering possible incentives to encourage airlines to move operations there from the current capital terminal, a senior official said this month.

Some critics of the AIFA have questioned whether that terminal and the AICM will be able to operate correctly simultaneously. The Government insists that it is and that money has been saved since the total cost of the work amounts to 3.6 billion dollars.

The new airport’s website was not fully functional, but local airlines Aeroméxico, Volaris and Viva Aerobus announced that they would fly from there to six Mexican cities, including Cancún. The Venezuelan state company Conviasa will do the same from Caracas.

Delta, Copa and another unidentified airline will fly to the United States from AIFA starting in the second half of 2022, Isidoro Pastor, the terminal’s general manager, said Monday.

The inauguration of the terminal occurs less than 20 days before a recall referendum in which Mexicans will decide if they want the president – whose popularity averages 58% – to complete his term before 2024, when it should end.