The official also said that, to date, the airport has served almost 300,000 users, and estimated that the airport will close in 2022 with traffic between 600,000 and 700,000 passengers. By the end of its first year of operations, in March 2023, it expects to exceed a traffic of 1 million passengers.
The AIFA comes from a season in which airlines have added several routes.
While Aeroméxico doubled the routes it offered, from three to six destinations, Volaris added nine flights to the two it already had, while Viva Aerobus added five new routes in July and three more at the beginning of September.
Regarding the entry of new flights, Pastor said that there is an interest of the national airlines that already operate in the AIFA to open connections to the United States, in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, San Antonio and Florida; however, downgrading to Category 2 has slowed down these plans.
The move by the US Federal Aviation Administration has also affected the plan to move cargo and charter operations from Mexico City International Airport (AICM) to AIFA.
“No more movements are being estimated right now until the category recovers [1]because if a cargo plane that flies to the United States wants to do it from here, it is prevented by the level of category that we have,” he explained.
However, the manager stated that up to 45% of international cargo could move from AICM to AIFA, despite the fact that the agreement announced with the airlines in May this year only referred to national cargo.
At the moment, the AIFA has projected the entry of Copa Airlines for September 26, which will operate to Panama with two weekly frequencies. In addition, Arajet will increase its AIFA flights from three to four weekly frequencies.
“When we decided to come to AIFA there was skepticism, but of the 18 routes that Arajet has, Felipe Ángeles is the best-selling one,” said Victor Pacheco Mendez, general director of Arajet.