López Obrador opens new Mexico City airport still with few flights

It expands with the opening of the air terminal. Change title and tuft. Go to Note. ///Mexico, 21 Mar 2022 (AFP) - President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday inaugurated a new airport in Mexico City, the first of his major infrastructure works, which began operations with a few flights. The terminal, built by the army at the Santa Lucia military base, about 50 km from the capital, began operating with a flight from Aeromexico to Villahermosa, Tabasco (south), the home state of the leftist president. “The airport is 100 (per cent), completely completed (...). It's just a matter of airlines increasing their travel,” said López Obrador during his daily press conference, from the new airport. On this first day there will be 20 operations by the companies that have confirmed their presence at the terminal: the national ones Aeromexico, Volaris and Viva Aerobús, and the Venezuelan Conviasa, the only international one so far, which will offer trips to Caracas, said the Secretary of National Defense, Luis Crescencio Sandoval, at the same conference. The airport, named Felipe Ángeles after a soldier of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century, replaces another terminal that the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) built in the suburb of Texcoco at a cost of $13 billion. López Obrador canceled this work by denouncing that it was fraught with corruption and was a waste of resources, and instead commissioned the army to build Felipe Angeles for some 3,657 million dollars.” Within the authorized budget, the time allotted and the required quality, we have fulfilled the mission,” said the commander of the military group of engineers at the site, Gustavo Vallejo, during the inauguration. The other priority projects of the López Obrador government are a refinery in Tabasco, the Maya Train - a 1,554 km tourist project in which the military also participates - and the modernization of the Tehuantepec interoceanic corridor. - Routes to the US - The complex was inaugurated in the run-up to the April 10 referendum, in which Mexicans will decide whether they want López Obrador, who is driving the consultation, to complete the six-year term for which he was elected in 2018. In Mexico there is no presidential re-election. The new terminal seeks to alleviate the saturation of the current Benito Juárez airport, which in 2021, despite the impact of the pandemic, moved 36 million passengers compared to the record of 50.3 million in 2019 before the coronavirus. neighbor Toluca. Analysts have considered that the simultaneous operation of airports increases the risk of accidents.But airport authorities argue that they have a navigation model that guarantees safety.Isidoro Pastor, operating director of the new airport, said at the press conference that in 2022 they expect to move 2.4 million passengers and by 2023 about 5 million. Pastor said that flights to the United States, one of the main destinations from Mexico, could start in the second half of this year with Delta, Copa and another airline he did not specify. For his part, López Obrador declared himself “optimistic” that Mexico will soon regain Category 1 air safety, after the United States lowered that rating in May 2021, which prevents national airlines from opening new routes to that country. “All the formalities are already being done, they are about to be resolved,” the president announced without giving dates. The new terminal received criticism because land accesses from Mexico City have not yet been completed. López Obrador himself left early Monday from Palacio Nacional, headquarters of the Executive in the heart of the capital, to prove that the journey to the airport took 40 minutes, although this Monday is a holiday in Mexico and there is less traffic. yug/axm/mr