New Mexico City airport nears take-off, with few flights

Two months before it is due to open with just a handful of confirmed flights, workers are racing to finish a new international airport for Mexico City -- one of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's flagship projects. With two commercial runways built on a military air base outside the capital, Felipe Angeles International Airport is meant to take the pressure off the city's Benito Juarez airport. The existing hub, which handled 36m passengers in 2021, is one of the busiest in Latin America. Its location in eastern Mexico City is far more convenient for many residents of the capital than Felipe Angeles, which is located about 40 km north of the capital's historic district. But Benito Juarez airport is showing its age and handled a record 50.3m passengers in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic. Felipe Angeles airport, named after a general in the Mexican revolution, has been engulfed in controversy from the start. After taking office in 2018, Lopez Obrador canceled another airport project launched by the previous government and already one-third complete. He called the $13b project a "bottomless pit" rife with corruption and decided instead to turn the Santa Lucia military air base into a second airport for the sprawling Mexican capital. Lopez Obrador commissioned the military -- which is also involved in other pet projects of his government, such as a tourist train in the Yucatan Peninsula -- to oversee construction of the new airport at a cost of around $3.6b. Around 87% of the airport construction has been finished with two months left before the March 21 opening, said Captain Diego Diaz Avila of the military's engineer corps. In its first phase of operation, the new airport will be able to handle 19.5m passengers a year. But so far, only low-cost Mexican airlines Volaris and Viva Aerobus have announced plans to operate a small number of flights at the new airport, with most staying at Benito Juarez.<br/>