Mexico City’s new airport inaugurated
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurated on Monday the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) that will serve Mexico City, three years after he scrapped the construction of Texcoco Airport, a project of the previous government.
The military base north of the Mexican capital that López Obrador has converted into an International Airport will start with only a handful of flights to Cancun, Tijuana, Merida, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Villahermosa in Mexico and Caracas in Venezuela.
→ Government denies cost overruns at Mexico City’s new airport.
Isidoro Pastor, executive director of the new airport, said at the press conference that flights to the United States were expected to begin in the second half of 2022 through Delta Airlines, Copa Airlines and an unidentified new carrier.
The airport is the first of Lopez Obrador’s planned major infrastructure projects to be launched, and aims to decongest Mexico City’s existing aerodrome some 45 kilometers to the south.
“It’s really beautiful, it’s one of the best airports in the world, a top-quality work by Army engineers,” López Obrador said before the inauguration.
The airport was built despite criticism from business groups that had backed the partially built airfield in Texcoco and canceled by López Obrador just weeks before he took office.
→ Aeromexico brings forward start operations at Felipe Angeles Airport.
After a controversial October 2018 referendum he promoted, López Obrador abandoned the unfinished airport at Texcoco, arguing that the project was riddled with corruption, geologically unsafe and too expensive.
The government spent $1.8 billion to pay Texcoco bondholders, which added to the costs of the canceled airport, which the president called “pharaonic.” He then commissioned the Mexican army to build the new airport.
Mexico is studying possible incentives to encourage airlines to move their operations from the current Mexico City hub, a senior official said this month, Reuters reported.
Some detractors of the new airport have questioned whether both airports can function properly simultaneously. The government insists they can.
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