Tijuana Airport’s bridge to the US is reshaping California-Mexico travel

Drive down San Diego’s Otay Mesa Freeway and suburban development gives way to a landscape of warehouses and logistics centers along the US-Mexico border. But in the middle of this anywhere-and-nowhere landscape sits a stucco terminal building with a busy curbside, full parking lots, and all the trappings of a contemporary airport. This is Cross Border Xpress. Opened in late 2015, Cross Border Xpress is the only international bridge on the US border that caters solely to air travelers. It has transformed the Tijuana Airport from a mid-sized Mexican facility into one of the country’s busier gateways if one takes into account the number of Americans using the bridge to fly to and from the airport. From 2015 to 2021, passenger numbers at Tijuana nearly doubled to 9.7m from 4.9m, according to data from airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico (GAP). The pandemic has only accelerated the changes to California-Mexico travel driven by Cross Border Xpress. In 2019, US Bureau of Transportation Statistics data show 1.6m people entered the US via the bridge, while only 150,760 people entered at the San Diego airport after flights from Mexico. That split appears to have only widened with Cross Border Xpress entries up nearly 28 percent compared to 2019 during the first seven months of the year, while US-Mexico airline seat capacity at the San Diego airport was down 34%, Diio by Cirium and the latest BTS data show. Cross Border Xpress is “really transforming the way of traveling from Southern California to Mexico,” GAP CEO Raul Revuelta Musalem said.<br/>