The management of Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport (AICM) and the airlines have reached an agreement to reduce hourly operations from 61 to 52 in saturated schedules (from 7:00 to 22:59) from the next winter season, which runs from 30 October 2022 to 25 March 2023.
The agreement will now be submitted for consideration by the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC) for final sanction and approval, after which it will be communicated to the operators and agencies involved.
“It should be noted that this measure will be carried out following the IATA, ACI and WWAC management guide for temporary airport capacity reductions, which states that any schedule reduction must be done in a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory manner by the airport administration and the ACAA schedules coordinator,” the Mexican Ministry of Communications and Transport said in a statement.
In recent months, and even more so after the incident in which two Volaris A320s almost collided at the AICM on 7 May, the Mexican authorities made progress on the “mandatory” transfer of operations to the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), the alternative developed by the government of Manuel López Obrador to tackle the problems of saturation at the AICM after ruling out the construction – already underway – of Texcoco Airport.
With more than 15,000 flights scheduled for September (representing 51.8% of the total), Aeromexico is the main operator at the AICM. It is followed by Volaris with 17.5% and Viva Aerobus with 14.9%.
Both Aeromexico, Viva Aerobus and Volaris have been increasing their offer at AIFA, having gone from 59,000 seats in May to 93,000 in August, according to information compiled by Aviacionline through the Cirium platform. That figure will grow, according to the schedules published now, to 189,000 in September, 282,000 in October and will close with 293,000 in December.
Conviasa is the only airline that also operates in the AIFA, but Copa Airlines and Arajet, a Dominican new low-cost airline, will join in September.
