Continuing its accelerated growth, the Querétaro International Airport (QRO) saw 25% more passengers in the first quarter of 2025 compared to last year.
The Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT) reported that in January, QRO saw a 29.2% rise in passenger numbers, followed by 18.8% growth in February and a 26.8% jump in March.
In domestic passenger traffic, QRO recorded annual growth of 34.9% in Q1. In contrast, international passenger traffic went up by 7.1%.
March in particular saw a record number of passengers compared to previous years, moving a total of 190,322. This made it the airport’s busiest March since the start of airport traffic recordkeeping in 2006.
Domestic travel represented 70% of the flights taken from Querétaro between January and March, up from 64.9% in the same period of 2024, when the percentage of international travel was 35.1%.
Still, overall air operations at QRO, which includes non-flight activities, decreased 6.4% over 2024, with 12,094 air operations. This decline was primarily driven by a significant drop (30.3%) in air operations in February.
QRO moved 18,486.9 tonnes of cargo in the first three months of the year, reflecting a 4% increase. Meanwhile, cargo volume in March grew 27% year-on-year.
QRO is welcoming an increasing number of international flights after the state completed an 80-million-peso expansion project at the airport in December 2023. Some of these new destinations include a nonstop Querétaro-Madrid flight operated by Spanish airline Iberojet, starting in October this year.
Querétaro Tourism Minister Marco Antonio del Prete Tercero also recently announced a new direct flight between QRO and Los Angeles, California, starting in July. He added that the airport is currently in talks with Panama-based Copa Airlines about starting a non-stop route between Querétaro and Panama City.
With reports from NMas and El Economista