In the following five graphs Expansion analyzes the evolution of the airport that still seeks to be the answer to the saturation of the International Airport of Mexico City (AICM).
1. Passenger traffic
Between March 2022 and January this year, AIFA received just over a million passengers. After a slow start, the federal government resorted to an agreement with the air sector to open new routes at the airport starting last September.
The result was a jump of more than 90% compared to August, and a second jump of more than 80% in October after the opening of new destinations by Aeroméxico, Viva Aerobus and Volaris; however, since then, traffic has stalled at the threshold of 180,000 to 200,000 monthly users.
2. Where is AIFA located compared to other airports?
After its startup and the addition of new routes, AIFA has slowly made its way among the main airports in the country.
In recent months, AIFA has been ranked 11th among the airports with the highest traffic, above other terminals such as Oaxaca, Ciudad Juárez and Mexicali. However, it still has a large gap with the AICM traffic; only in the high season of December -which has been its best month-, AIFA concentrated only 4% of the users received by the Benito Juárez International Airport.
3. The most successful AIFA routes
To date, AIFA has 18 routes, 15 national and three international, to which a fourth will soon be added to Houston, operated by Aeroméxico.
Despite the number of routes, in the last 10 months 53% of passengers has concentrated on three destinations: Cancun, Guadalajara and Monterrey. During this period, other routes fell by the wayside, such as the connection to Villahermosa operated by Aeroméxico, which in May transported just 352 users.
4. A domestic airport
In the accumulated of the first 10 months of the year, 96% of passenger traffic has been from the domestic market, and only 4% has been destined for another country.
The AIFA is against the degradation to Category 2 air safety, which has prevented Mexican airlines from opening flights to the United States, which generates around 80% of international traffic to the country; however, US airlines can open routes to Mexico, but they have not done so to AIFA.
5. Expectation vs reality
Before the start of operations, Isidoro Pastor, general director of AIFA, estimated that the airport would close its first year with traffic of 2.4 million passengers; however, to date it has just over 1 million users, 46% of what was forecast.
Although the index does not include the users of February and March because the data is not yet available, to reach the goal, AIFA would have to serve more passengers in two months than it received in its first 10 months.