Hourly flight numbers at the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) will be reduced to 43 from 52 starting next Monday.
The plan to reduce flight numbers at Mexico’s busiest airport was first announced last August and initially scheduled to take effect in late October.
However, the federal government subsequently postponed its implementation until Jan. 8 to to avoid a negative impact on travelers using the AICM during the peak winter travel season.
In a statement issued on Friday, the airport confirmed that hourly flight numbers would be reduced as of Monday.
It didn’t specify when flight numbers would increase again, but noted that the same reduction would apply for the “upcoming summer season,” which will commence March 31 and conclude Oct. 26.
In order to cut flight numbers from 52 to 43 — a 17% reduction — a “complicated and complex process in the allocation of landing and takeoff schedules (slots)” was completed, the AICM said.
It added that the process resulted in the “proportional reduction of 9,413 schedules” over an unspecified period. The AICM highlighted that “the reduction of slots will not apply to international flights.”
The federal government declared in early 2022 that both AICM terminals had reached saturation point, and enacted the same year a so-called “temporary” plan to reduce the number of flights arriving and departing, from 61 to 52 per hour.
In August last year, the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport said that the reduction to 43 flights per hour would also be “temporary” and “remain in place as long as the saturation conditions at AICM persist.”
As things stand, it appears that the limit of 43 flights per hour will apply throughout most of 2024.
The National Chamber of Air Transport said last year that “the basic problem at AICM is not the capacity of [flights] per hour, but the age of the infrastructure and [its state of] deterioration.”
Former airport chief Gerardo Ferrando said in 2019 that plans were being drawn up for a third passenger terminal at AICM, but the federal government said in 2022 that the project was canceled.
The government has sought to encourage Mexican airlines to shift some of their operations to the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), which opened north of Mexico City in early 2022.
A presidential decree issued early last year suspended cargo airline operations at the AICM, virtually forcing such carriers to use AIFA.
Mexico News Daily
