Keeping the borders open during the pandemic allowed the blow in this area not to have the impact that other destinations that compete with Mexico did experience. And until we meet again in the top 10 of the countries with the most tourists in 2021.
In our favor is the fact that there is a huge contained demand for travel, many people who have not yet resumed their vacations to recurring destinations, such as Mexican beaches. Against this there are structural and image issues: the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) did not become a hub for air attraction and the hub, which is still the International Airport of Mexico City, is saturated and with a string of dangerous situations on its runways that have not been the best rehearsal to recover its air safety category 1.
Since May 2021, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded our country from air safety level 1 to 2 and today we have the same rating as Venezuela, the island of Saint Lucia or Bangladesh due to that we do not meet minimum security standards. It is expected that in August this will recover, but it is a situation in which there has been no real concern and strong action by the federal government to show that this is temporary.
One of the effects of this loss in rating is that they cannot increase routes with the United States (where seven out of 10 international tourists arrive in the country) and that there are no investments from wholesale tourism companies because there is a cap on flights, which has already been reached.
We have 28 taches from the US authorities and although the FAA canceled several of the revisions that were due this year, the truth is that in an act of ‘sincericide’, the Federal Civil Aviation Agency – in charge of lifting this bad mark – said that the government’s austerity plan prevented accelerating the adjustments, since they have fewer people and a budget than ever before in 40 years. They did not even take into account that this action prevents the increase of international flights in the AIFA.