Mexico's new airport crucial for passenger growth, says IATA

Mexico risks losing long-term passenger growth and billions of dollars if it fails to go through with building a new hub in the capital to alleviate congestion, an executive with the International Air Transport Association said Tuesday. Mexico’s incoming government last week postponed a decision on whether to complete a partially constructed new airport in Mexico City, saying the public should be consulted on the fate of the $13b-dollar hub, which the next president initially opposed. President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the project was tainted by corruption prior to his July 1 landslide election victory, and had pressed for an existing military airport north of the capital to be expanded instead. Without the new airport, around 20m fewer passengers would fly to Mexico City starting in 2035, year over year, said Peter Cerda, regional VP in the Americas for IATA. It would also mean a long-term loss of $20b from Mexico’s GDP and cost the country 200,000 jobs, according to an airline-industry study on the financial impact of not building the new airport, Cerda said. “If you don’t build an airport that’s able to meet the needs of the next 50 years you just cannot continue to grow,” Cerda said. “And that has financial implications for the country.”<br/>