Mexican President López Obrador inaugurates Felipe Ángeles airport in Mexico City with still few flights

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurated a new airport in Mexico City on Monday, the first of his major infrastructure works, which began operations with a few flights.

The terminal, located about 50 km from the capital, began operating with an Aeroméxico flight to Villahermosa, Tabasco (south), the home state of the president.

On this first day, there were 20 operations from the companies that have confirmed their presence at the terminal: the national airlines Aeroméxico, Volaris and Viva Aerobús, and the Venezuelan Conviasa, the only international to date.

The airport, named Felipe Ángeles in honour of a soldier in the Mexican Revolution at the start of the 20th century, replaces another terminal that the government of Enrique Peña Nieto built in the suburb of Texcoco for a cost of 13 billion dollars.

The new terminal aims to alleviate the saturation of the current Benito Juárez airport, which in 2021, despite the impact of the pandemic, transported 36 million passengers against the record of 50.3 million in 2019 before the coronavirus.

Isidoro Pastor, operational director of the new airport, said during the press conference that in 2022 they plan to move 2.4 million passengers and by 2023 about 5 million.

Pastor pointed out that flights to the United States, one of Mexico’s main destinations, could begin in the second half of this year with Delta Air Lines, Copa and another airline that he did not specify.

The new terminal has been criticised because land access from Mexico City has not yet been completed.