Cancún’s Airspace Redesign as Tulum Airport Fades

Mexico — The Servicio de Navegación en el Espacio Aéreo Mexicano (SENEAM), under the direction of Javier Alonso Vega, is quietly conducting analyses of arrival and departure trajectories at the Cancún International Airport. The studies project new, longer operational vertices to accommodate increasingly larger aircraft.

This reconfiguration effort comes as the airport, operated by Grupo Asur under Adolfo Castro, is set to become the primary destination for airlines canceling their operations at the Tulum International Airport during the upcoming autumn-winter season. This shift occurs despite a 3.7 percent reduction in passenger numbers at the Cancún terminal.

The Tulum Airport, controlled by the militarized state company Gafsacom under General Tonatiuh Velasco, has faced significant challenges. It is widely known that the Tulum Airport, like its accompanying Tren Maya station, is not located in Tulum itself but is situated 43 kilometers away in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. The ground access is described as expensive and complex.

Furthermore, Tulum has lost some of its luster due to retail drug dealing, disorderly urban growth, and the “privatization of beaches,” including the El Jaguar Park. The airport, managed by General Diego Campillo, is confronting a reduction in flight frequencies from carriers such as American Airlines and United Airlines. Other airlines, including Air Canada, Spirit, Copa, Avianca, and Discover (Lufthansa), have moved their operations to Cancún or have ceased flying to the Tulum destination altogether.

From January to August of this year, the number of travelers using the Tulum terminal plummeted by 44 percent. The air-to-ground connectivity with the Tren Maya has also been notable for its invisibility.

As the Tulum airport was one of the emblematic project promises of the current administration, its loss of attractiveness has a cascading effect on other large-scale projects. This includes the Felipe Ángeles International Airport in the state of Mexico, which had the Tulum terminal as one of its main domestic flight destinations.

The Felipe Ángeles Airport, under the management of General Isidoro Pastor, has demonstrated notable performance by increasing its passenger numbers by nearly 18 percent on an annualized basis in the first eight months of the year, transporting 4.6 million people. However, the future impact on the number of operations conducted at Tulum could lead to undesirable repercussions that may be confronted with more and better terrestrial connectivity and itineraries.