Aborted landings up 84% due to heavy traffic at Mexico City airport

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August 12, 2019

aicm — Aircraft on the tarmac at Mexico City airport.

Aborted landings at Mexico City airport increased 52% in the first five months of the year, and those caused specifically by crowding on the runways rose by 84%.

Data obtained by the news agency Bloomberg through a freedom of information request shows that pilots of 541 planes were forced to perform go-arounds – as aborted landings are called – before they could touch down at the Benito Juárez International Airport between January and May.

Of that number, 83 were caused by the presence of aircraft that had not yet cleared the runways.

In the first five months of 2018, there were 357 go-arounds of which 45 were due to clogged runways.

Bloomberg reported that aborted landings are still rare in Mexico City but the increase to six out of every 1,000 landings between January and May compared to four in the same period last year is nevertheless cause for concern.

Go-arounds cost airlines both time and money because they force planes to use more fuel.

Richard Bloom, an aviation security professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said that for every 1,000 landing attempts at a global level, between one and three will result in a go-around.

The increase in aborted landings in Mexico City should at the very least “lead to a review of the typical factors involved in go-arounds,” he said.

Gabriel Yee, flight operations manager for Aeroméxico, said that sudden changes in weather conditions have caused aborted landings in Mexico City in recent months.

However, he told Bloomberg that Mexico City airport doesn’t have a policy known as “minimum runway use” to get planes off the runway quickly, adding that “there’s no denying the airport has more operations than before.”

Passenger traffic grew 6.6% last year to 47.7 million people. The airport has two runways but they can’t be used simultaneously because they are too close together.

Yee pointed out that there is no short-term solution other than finding ways to make the airport “work more efficiently.”

To ease congestion at Mexico City airport, Latin America’s busiest airport, the federal government is pursuing a three-pronged plan – but relief is still some way off.

The Defense Secretariat has been given the responsibility of building a new airport at the Santa Lucía air force base in México state and the existing airports in Mexico City and Toluca will be upgraded. A third terminal will be built at the existing facility in the capital.

The Santa Lucía project, however, is currently mired due to legal opposition and even if it materializes, aviation experts doubt that it will be able to meet the growing demand for runway space caused by the rise of budget domestic airlines.

In that context, President López Obrador’s decision to cancel the previous government’s Texcoco airport project – after a legally questionable public consultation – becomes an even greater target for criticism.

Aviation experts at Mitre Corp.’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development have questioned the viability of the Mexico City and Santa Lucía airports to operate simultaneously due to their proximity to each other.

Aeroméxico CEO Andres Conesa said that he had similar concerns.

“We haven’t seen the analysis,” he said. “We’d like to see the ability to increase operations in this dual system. We prefer to have one airport because we’re under a hub-and-spoke model.”

As for Toluca, the chances of success of the plan to increase traffic at that airport is dependent on cost, the CEO of budget airline Volaris told Bloomberg.

“We stopped operating out of Toluca because of what it cost us,” Enrique Beltranena said. “We need more clarity” about how much it would cost to return.

Source: Bloomberg (sp)

The dreaded 502 error is a digital publisher’s worst nightmare

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August 12, 2019

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The 502 landing page generated by Kinsta, the company whose servers host Mexico News Daily.

In the old days the worst that ever happened was the press would break down. But the press crew would go to work, fix the problem and get it rolling again, usually in a matter of hours, or less.

It was mechanical, and simple.

These days, we’ve got things like 502 errors to deal with. They are generated when a connection to a website cannot be made, usually due to an overloaded web server.

So the techs and engineers go to work and if we’re lucky the problem is quickly resolved. If not, several days can elapse before the problem has been identified.

It’s technical, and not always simple.

But in the meantime, thousands of Mexico News Daily readers — in our case 2,409 over the course of five days — can be affected.

The number of readers who were locked out was only 1.28% of the total readership during that period, but enough to keep a publisher awake at night wondering when the nightmare would end.

What made the issue even more worrisome was the phone call that came last week from a guy who said, in very broken English, that he was a hacker and had hacked Mexico News Daily.

Oh, sure, I thought as I looked at a monitor that indicated there were 450 readers on our site at that moment. You’re not much of a hacker, I said to myself, brushed him off and hung up.

The next day 585 readers encountered the dreaded 502 error message and could not read the news.

From Thursday through Sunday we employed all kinds of measures to reduce website load, but not until Sunday night did we begin to see any improvement. By Monday afternoon, as of this writing, there had not been a single 502 for nine hours.

Were we hacked? It appears unlikely, but I’m not going to declare either way.

Just so you know, if you see the 502 error there are two choices: wait a day or two, perhaps longer, and it will likely resolve itself.

Or you can do this: go through the following steps, advancing one by one until the problem is resolved. First refresh the page; then close all browser windows, open a new one and go back to Mexico News Daily; then clear the browser cache; then clear cookies; then restart the computer. I found clearing cookies did it for me, so you could always do that first. But start with the others if you would prefer not to delete cookies.

It pains me to have to ask a reader to go through all that to correct a problem that we created. But that is the nature of the error. The page has been cached by your device, or another server between us and you, and we’re stuck with a bad situation all around.

Although everything is running smoothly at the moment, the big test will come this evening when we send 50,000 email newsletters to the subscribers of two mailing lists.

My stomach roils at the thought that the nightmare is not over.

But I’ll still take a web server over a press any day.

The writer is publisher and editor of Mexico News Daily.

Corruption charged in delivery of youth employment program scholarships

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MND Staff

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August 12, 2019

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The program pays youths 3,600 pesos a month.

State-based federal officials have denounced a range of corrupt practices in the delivery of the government’s youth employment program.

Delegates in Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí, Sonora, Tabasco and Yucatán all say that some young people enrolled in the “Youths Building the Future” program are handing over part of their 3,600-peso (US $183) monthly scholarships to their employers in exchange for waiving their obligation to show up to work.

The officials told the newspaper Milenio that the moches – cuts or kickbacks – paid by the youths to companies and other organizations registered as employers in the program range between 500 and 1,600 pesos per month.

They also said that in some cases, employers are withholding part or all of the remuneration to which apprentices are entitled.

Tabasco delegate Manuel Merino Campos said that authorities have detected 140 companies that engaged in illegal acts in connection with the program. All of them lost their accreditation to participate in the scheme, he added.

Merino said more than 200 young people in Tabasco filed complaints stating that companies charged them unjust fees to participate.

As a result of the corruption allegations, the program has been temporarily suspended in the Gulf coast state.

Guillermo Díaz Robles, the Sonora director of the employment program, said the participation of 18 companies in that state has been terminated after it was discovered that they too were charging their apprentices fees in exchange for employment. However, no legal action was taken against them.

Another 12 Sonora companies are under investigation, Díaz said.

Guerrero delegate Iván Hernández Díaz told Milenio that the intention to implement the same practice was detected in the state’s Sierra region although it was civil society organizations rather than companies that planned to collect fees from their young employees.

However, authorities intervened to put an end to the plan before it started and revoked the organization’s authorization to take part.

In Yucatán, the federal government’s social programs coordinator said authorities will carry out an audit of the employment scheme’s operation to ensure that young people are actually attending the jobs and training to which they have been assigned.

“There are companies that have told the young people . . . to give them a part [of their scholarship] and don’t [worry about] showing up . . .” Joaquín Díaz Mena said.

In Nayarit, Chiapas and San Luis Potosí, authorities have detected the presence of ghost, or shell, companies that have registered in the “Youths Building the Future” program in order to recruit young people and provide them with sham employment opportunities.

In San Luis Potosí, cases have been detected in which the “employed” youths and the phony companies split the scholarship resources equally, delegate Teresa Pérez Granados said.

The claims of corruption within the youth employment program come less than a week after the Labor and Social Welfare Secretariat said it had reached its goal of giving scholarships to a million young people.

However, whether that number of people are actually engaged in active employment is now in doubt.

The states in which the highest number of ninis (ni trabajan ni estudian) meaning “they don’t work, they don’t study” have enrolled in the scheme – whether they are actually working or not – are Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, México state, Guerrero, Michoacán and Mexico City.

The states with the lowest take-up are Baja California, Baja California Sur, Nuevo León, Aguascalientes, Sonora, Coahuila and Colima.

Baja California Sur delegate Víctor Castro Cosío said that the program’s rollout in the state “can be considered a failure.”

He explained that only 3,000 signed up for the program while authorities were hoping to attract 11,000 would-be apprentices.

“. . . We didn’t reach our goal, we think, because many young people here preferred to look for work elsewhere, as the 3,600 pesos a month didn’t seem like a lot.”

Source: Milenio (sp)

Deported migrants featured in new interactive border wall art in Tijuana

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Madison Koen

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August 12, 2019

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The border wall that cuts off Tijuana’s beach from its American counterpart was transformed last Friday into a canvas that tells the stories of deported migrants.

The interactive art installation at Playas de Tijuana by Lizbeth De la Cruz Santana consists of portraits of four deported migrants, spanning the height of a section of the border fence along Tijuana’s beach.

Visitors who hold their cellphones up to a QR barcode affixed to one of the murals can access audio on the project’s website narrating each migrant’s story.

The subjects are a United States veteran, two mothers who were forced to leave behind their U.S.-born children and a man who was deported just months before he would have qualified for DACA — the 2012 program designed to shield from deportation people who were brought to the U.S. when they were young.

De la Cruz Santana, 28, herself the child of a Mexican migrant, said that each of those depicted in the installation is someone she knows, and that she felt compelled to share their stories to bring awareness to the dangers and hardships faced by migrants during their journey north and during deportation.

She added that she hopes the project, which is part of her doctoral dissertation and funded through a grant provided by the Mellon Public Scholars Fellowship, could help raise money to provide legal assistance for deported migrants.

“Technology is one of the best ways and venues for people to tell their stories.”

Mauro Carrera, a muralist and partner with De la Cruz Santana on the project, said he hopes the project shows “the people behind the politics.”

De la Cruz said that while mounting the installation she was struck by the stark contrast between the bustle and liveliness of beachgoers, restaurants, bars and a bullring on the Mexican side of the border fence, and the nervous quiet of parked Border Patrol vehicles on the U.S. side.

“If you look past this wall on the U.S. side, there’s nothing. I wanted to erase the border.”

Source: Milenio (sp)

Migrant shelter director kidnapped after refusing to give up asylum-seekers

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Madison Koen

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August 12, 2019

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A Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, was kidnapped on August 3 after refusing to hand over Cuban asylum seekers to an organized crime gang.

Nine days ago, armed civilians stormed the Casa del Migrante AMAR shelter with the intention of kidnapping several Cuban refugees in order to ransom them back to their families.

Instead, the gunmen found their way blocked by Aarón Méndez, who steadfastly refused to turn over the Cubans. They took Méndez instead.

In an interview with the news agency EFE, Méndez’s colleague Erbin Ortiz said Cuban migrants are thought to be “the most worthwhile migrants to kidnap for organized crime” because of the speed with which family members pay ransoms.

Ortiz said that after Méndez’s kidnapping, Casa del Migrante AMAR contacted federal authorities, who placed the shelter under 24-hour protective surveillance. However, so far the shelter’s workers have received no news regarding the case or ransom demands from the priest’s kidnappers.

“We all live in fear that the criminals could return and take more people.”

Ortiz said that Méndez had given himself “100%” to the shelter and the task of defending migrants’ rights since 2009.

Casa del Migrante AMAR has 100 beds to offer temporary refuge to migrants hoping to cross into or seek asylum in the United States near Nuevo Laredo, although Ortiz assured that the shelter often operated well beyond capacity, housing up to 450 migrants at a time.

Ortiz said that Méndez often enlisted migrants at his shelter in charitable projects around Nuevo Laredo, including handing out food in impoverished communities, cleaning parks and painting schools around the northern border town.

Without news on the investigation into their director’s disappearance, shelter workers reached out to President López Obrador on Twitter:

“We demand that López Obrador find [Méndez] alive and to stop stigmatizing those who defend migrants at the northern border.”

Source: Milenio (sp), El Sol de México (sp)

Youth sports foundation purchases narco-mansion for 102 million pesos

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Simon Schatzberg

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August 12, 2019

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A mansion owned by accused drug trafficker Zhenli Ye Gon was sold to the Butaca Enlace Foundation at the latest federal government auction, held by the Administrative Allocation of Goods Service (SAE) on Sunday.

The foundation paid 102 million pesos (US $5.2 million) for the mansion, which is located in the Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood of Mexico City. The four-story building has 10 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, a pool and an elevator.

The Butaca Enlace Foundation has helped over two million young people participate in athletic events over the past 11 years. In 2011, the foundation supported the participation of over 50,000 athletes at the Pan American Games in Guadalajara.

The foundation’s director, Carlos Bremer, is also director and CEO of Grupo Financiero Value, a financial services company that was founded in 1992. He is also known for his participation in Shark Tank México, a program that seeks to promote entrepreneurship.

The Mexican government seized the mansion in 2007 after Ye Gon was arrested in the United States on drug trafficking charges. Police found more than US $200 million in cash in one of the bedrooms. Ye Gon, who was born in China and became a Mexican citizen in 2003, was extradited to Mexico in 2016.

The mansion was transferred to the SAE in 2012, and the furniture and other items found inside the house were auctioned off.

At the presidential press conference this morning, SAE Director Ricardo Rodríguez called the auction a success.

“This auction was very special because we raised 125.8 million pesos, 102 of which were from the Lomas de Chapultepec mansion,” he said. “It was a very special event because it was the most valuable piece of real estate that we have dealt with. We raised four times more than in the vehicle auction.”

The proceeds will be used to give scholarships to 544 Mexican athletes.

Before the auction, Ye Gon unsuccessfully filed for an injunction to prevent his property from being auctioned off. His lawyer, Juan Luis Gómez Jardón, told Grupo Fórmula that his client will continue taking legal action to recover his old home, and that the proceedings will now involve Bremer, who bought the house.

“The businessman Carlos Bremer bought a legal problem when he bought Zhenli Ye Gon’s house for 102 million pesos,” said Gómez. “The government sold the Lomas de Chapultepec house without fulfilling the legal requirements.”

Source: El Financiero (sp), El Sol de México (sp), El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)

Mexican athletes make history with 136 medals at Pan American Games

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MND Staff

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August 12, 2019

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games-archers — Medal-winning Mexican archers in Lima, Peru.

Mexico finished third on the medal tally at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, winning a total of 136 medals, including 37 gold.

It was Mexico’s best performance at the regional sporting event in terms of medals won although the gold tally was five less than the record 42 taken home by Mexican athletes at the 2011 games in Guadalajara, Jalisco.

The only other time that Mexico has placed so highly on the medal tally was at the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City at which it also finished third.

Mexico’s medal haul – 37 golds, 36 silvers and 63 bronzes – was won by athletes competing in 31 different sports including athletics, gymnastics, weightlifting, rowing, judo, squash, diving, swimming and shooting.

Not a single day passed during the 16-day event on which the Mexican team didn’t win at least one gold medal, a feat that had never been achieved before.

paolo longoria — **Racquetball player Paola Longoria has won more gold medals at the Pan American Games than any other Mexican, after winning three more in Lima.**

The gold medals came in 14 different sports: athletics, canoeing, cycling, diving, water skiing, Basque pelota, gymnastics, weightlifting, modern pentathlon, racquetball, rowing, taekwondo, archery and triathlon.

The opening and penultimate days of the games were the most successful days for the Mexican delegation, with athletes winning five and seven gold medals respectively.

On July 27, Paola Fragoso was triumphant in her taekwondo weight division, Crisanto Grijales won the men’s triathlon, Mariana Arceo came out on top in the modern pentathlon, Jonathan Muñoz lifted his way to glory in the 67-kilogram weightlifting division and Daniela Souza overcame her Brazilian opponent to win the final of the 49-kilogram weight division for taekwondo.

On August 10, Kenia Lechuga took top spot on the podium after rowing to victory in the women’s single sculls and Mexico had a highly successful day on the Basque pelota court, winning five gold medals in singles and doubles events.

The seventh gold on Saturday went to Mexico’s female racquetball team.

Mexico’s performance in the Peruvian capital far exceeded the expectation of the Mexican press and National Sports Commission director Ana Gabriela Guevara, who predicted a haul of 19 gold medals.

The United States finished first on the medal tally with 120 golds out of a total of 293 podium placings.

Brazil ranked second with 55 golds out of 171 medals, while Canada placed fourth with 35 golds.

Cuba, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru and the Dominican Republic took out spots fifth to tenth respectively. Athletes from 30 countries participated.

The next edition of the Pan American Games will be held in Santiago, Chile, in 2023.

Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)

Bids sought for 12,000-strong security force for federal buildings

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MND Staff

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August 12, 2019

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The federal government has called for bids from security companies interested in providing between 12,000 and 15,000 guards to protect almost 3,000 public buildings.

The Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) published a tender on July 29 that specifies that only one company will be awarded the 16-month government contract. The successful bidder will be announced on August 23.

The guards will provide security for 2,937 buildings belonging to most federal government secretariats and agencies.

The buildings include office blocks and public hospitals located in various states and Mexico City.

The decision to seek a single company to provide the large security contingent is a radical departure from the way in which guards have been traditionally hired.

Most security contracts have previously been awarded by individual government departments to small and medium-sized companies based in the area where the protection was sought.

But most of those companies would not have the capacity to provide the number of guards sought by the government and would therefore be precluded from bidding under the new procedure.

The Federal Protection Service, a government security agency, could be among the bidders, the newspaper Reforma reported.

However, the agency currently only employs 4,000 guards, a number which would not even meet the personnel requirements for federal buildings in Mexico City.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Day Zero for water: Mexico on the list of water-stressed countries

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Madison Koen

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August 12, 2019

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About a third of the world’s population of over 7 billion live in countries at high risk of running out of water in the near future, and Mexico ranks high on the list, according to a study by the World Resources Institute.

The institute categorized countries into five different levels according to their relative risk of consuming all of their water resources, ranging from “Low Baseline Water Stress” to “Extremely High Baseline Water Stress.”

Mexico falls into the high-stress category, the second-highest on the list, meaning that the nation consumes between 40% and 80% of the water supply available in a year. Overall, Mexico ranks 24th out of the 164 nations included in the study.

However, a more detailed look at the maps included in the study shows that some regions of Mexico are under significantly more baseline water stress than others. Fifteen states, all in northern and central Mexico, fall within the “Extremely High Baseline Water Stress” category, meaning that they consume between 80% and 100% of available water every year.

Among the states most vulnerable to water crises Baja California Sur is in the lead, followed closely by Guanajuato, Mexico City, Aguascalientes, México state, Querétaro, Hidalgo, Chihuahua, Zacatecas, Sonora, Sinaloa, Nuevo León, Morelos, Jalisco and Tamaulipas.

Several Mexican states, mostly located in the Gulf region, are at medium to high risk of suffering drought, including Tabasco, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Yucatán, Colima and Puebla.

Mexico is one of 44 countries, representing one-third of the world’s population, deemed most at risk of hitting “Day Zero,” the point at which there is not enough water to meet the needs of its citizens.

“Water stress poses serious threats to human lives, livelihoods and business stability. It’s poised to worsen unless countries act: population growth, socioeconomic development and urbanization are increasing water demands, while climate change can make precipitation and demand more variable.”

However, the institute stressed that decisive action could have a significant and swift impact on countries’ available water resources.

It said that to step back from impending disaster, countries should implement several strategies, including increasing agricultural efficiency, investing in gray and green infrastructure and treating, reusing and recycling water.

“The data is clear: there are undeniably worrying trends in water. But by taking action now and investing in better management, we can solve water issues for the good of people, economies and the planet.”

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Commando kills 8, wounds 3 in Irapuato pool hall

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Simon Schatzberg

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August 12, 2019

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A commando attacked a pool hall in the city of Irapuato, Guanajuato, on Saturday night, killing eight people and injuring three others.

The attack took place in Irapuato’s Che Guevara neighborhood, right next to a police station.

The group of about 10 armed men started shooting at people on the street around 10:00pm and then entered the pool hall, where they started shooting at patrons.

Three people died in the building, while another died outside, two on the way to the hospital and two others at the hospital. Three others were seriously injured.

Irapuato Mayor Ricardo Ortiz Gutiérrez said the attack happened so quickly that officers who were stationed at the nearby police station were not able to respond until the aggressors were already fleeing the scene.

“It was very fast, 35 seconds, they just came and started shooting and we couldn’t respond or anything,” he said.

There were 31 homicides in the state over the weekend. The dead include a municipal police officer from the city of León, five civilians who were killed in a clash with security forces in the municipality of Yuriria, and a National Guardsman who was shot dead in the same municipality during a shootout with organized crime.

Lieutenant Anastasio Carlos was the first member of the new security force to fall in combat.

Source: El Universal (sp)