A lack of services in the terminal building of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) and difficulties getting to and from the new facility marred the experience of travelers who used the airport on its first day of operations.

Banks, currency exchange offices and food and beverage outlets at the AIFA – located approximately 50 kilometers north of Mexico City in México state – were not operational on Monday, according to a report by El Universal.

An information kiosk employee told the newspaper that banks and exchange offices will open in the coming days.

“There will be an HSBC and BBVA but they’re not operating today. There are no food outlets [open]. There will be more services as activities at the airport normalize,” the employee said.

While the services usually on offer at an international airport were not available, a number of informal vendors set up shop, hawking merchandise that included AIFA-related memorabilia. One enterprising woman set up a tlayuda stand and attracted a long lineup of hungry customers.

A resident of the Mexico City borough of Álvaro Obregón who traveled to the AIFA to take the inaugural flight to Caracas, Venezuela, described the new airport as “modern and very nice” but added that some fine-tuning is needed.

Ernesto Rodríguez also said that the installation of road signs to direct motorists to the facility from Mexico City would be helpful.

Alejandro Ortega told El Universal that getting to the airport from Huixquilucan, a México state municipality some 70 kilometers away, took almost three hours because navigation apps weren’t familiar with the route.

“It was a disaster honestly,” he said, explaining that the protracted route selected by Waze and Google Maps added 1 1/2 hours to his travel time.

“It took us almost three hours; two hours and 48 minutes,” said Ortega, whose mother-in-law was booked on the flight to Caracas which, like many other incoming and outgoing services on Monday, wasn’t on time.

Passengers who arrived at the AIFA on the first flights into the new airport also faced transport problems. Those who chose to leave on a Mexibús service endured wait times of over an hour due to the limited number of buses in operation, El Universal reported.

Passengers looking for a taxi found few options and high prices. An official at the sole taxi stand said that demand for taxis exceeded expectations. The 33 taxis that were dispatched to the airport to provide initial service were quickly taken, he said.

El Universal reported that a taxi trip to the center of Mexico City cost 812 pesos (US $40), while a journey to the southern neighborhood of Portales was slightly more expensive at 890 pesos. Hiring a car was cheaper, with companies such as Hertz offering a vehicle for 550 pesos per day with a 200-peso fee for dropping it off in central Mexico City.

Some passengers complained about the lack of internet signal to arrange a pick up via Uber, but there were reports that ride-sharing companies were prohibited from entering the AIFA precinct.

Private companies offered van and bus services to destinations such as Santa Fe, the Mundo E shopping center, the Observatorio bus terminal and Toluca, the capital of México state. The price of tickets was substantially lower than a taxi fare, and the drivers – unlike some people who traveled to the AIFA on Monday – presumably knew where they were going.

With reports from El Universal 

Mexico City’s new airport will boast a paleontology museum, a housing complex for the military and a terminal with lucha libre-themed bathrooms. What is not yet clear is how many passengers will choose to use it.

Felipe Ángeles International Airport, which is about 40 kilometres from the city center and began operating Monday, will offer just seven passenger routes. Airline industry experts said crucial access infrastructure and more commercial incentives were still missing.

The only international flight from Felipe Ángeles is with Venezuela state carrier Conviasa to Caracas. President López Obrador said on Friday that he spoke to executives at U.S. airline Delta, which owns a stake in national flag carrier Aeroméxico, and that it was considering whether to add flights. Delta declined to comment.

The Mexican capital — with a metro area home to more than 20 million people — has experienced a decades-long aviation headache as policymakers failed to increase capacity.

One of López Obrador’s first acts as president was to scrap a partly-built US $13-billion Norman Foster-designed airport he said was mired in corruption, a move that rattled investors and signaled that his radical promises were not just campaign trail rhetoric.

López Obrador instead proceeded with the more modest Felipe Ángeles project, named after a revolutionary general. Like his other infrastructure plans, it was built by the military. After two and a half years of construction local media estimates the building will cost about 115 billion pesos ($5.6 billion).

“This project will benefit a lot of people, not just those that live in Las Lomas,” López Obrador said on Friday, referring to a high-income neighbourhood in the capital. “Little by little [the airlines] will come around and they will take all the spaces in the new airport.”

The lack of air capacity has long held back the capital’s economic growth and business leaders and economists argue that the decision to choose a network of medium-sized airports instead of one large hub would continue to hurt investment.

“In the best-case scenario if it’s successful . . . [Felipe Ángeles is] a medium-sized airport, it’s not proportionate to the needs of Mexico City,” said Luis de la Calle, a board member of Aeroméxico who spoke in his capacity as an economic consultant.

“The main beneficiaries of Mexico City not having a big airport are airports in other parts of Mexico and other places in the U.S.,” he added. Mexico City airport received 50 million passengers in 2019, roughly the same as the U.K.’s Gatwick airport. The Mexican government said Felipe Ángeles would initially have capacity for 20 million passengers, but airline executives said it needed strong financial incentives to keep ticket prices low as well as access roads and a train in order to grow.

On Thursday, just days ahead of its opening, hundreds of construction workers were still working on partly-built bridges and roads and digging ditches; not all the work will be finished in time for the official launch.

The government says a train taking airport passengers to and from the city center in 39 minutes will be ready in the second half of 2023.

“Airports in other parts of the world that are connected by train work very well,” said Juan Carlos Zuazua, chief executive of Mexican low-cost carrier VivaAerobus, who cited London’s Stansted as an example.

Felipe Ángeles’ airport passenger tax will be less than half that at Mexico City airport. But given its similar operating costs, combined with initially slower and more expensive transport from large swaths of the city, airlines would need more incentives to attract passengers, industry executives said.

Zuazua said the project would work but the government had to provide good incentives and connectivity. “It’ll be a success but in the medium [or] long term, it won’t be overnight.”

The airport’s commercial strategy will be in the hands of the military, which López Obrador has also put in charge of critical infrastructure from trains to ports.

Raúl Benítez Manaut, a professor at the National Autonomous University of México who has studied the country’s security forces, said López Obrador sees the military as more honest and efficient than bureaucrats. However, their ability to operate large-scale infrastructure is unproven and comes with governance risks.

“They have the capacity to administer resources to build things, but not to run a business,” he said. “It’s militarization of areas that should be civilian . . . it’s bad for a democracy.” Mexico’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Like airlines around the world, Mexico’s carriers were thrown into turmoil by the coronavirus pandemic. Aeroméxico has just emerged from bankruptcy protection, while budget airline Interjet is also restructuring. Last year the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration downgraded Mexico’s aviation safety rating, which means it cannot add new flights to its main international destination. Airline executives said they expect the country to be upgraded again in the coming months.

Zuazua at VivaAerobus said the industry was ready to scale up flights at the new airport if it makes commercial sense — but the government could not force the issue. “In the end, we respond to consumer demand.”

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