Mexico City’s new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (NLU) carried 299,051 passengers in the first six months of its history, according to data released by the Mexican civil aviation authorities. The new hub has not yet surpassed the 100,000-passenger mark in a single month in its short history, and Aeromexico has quickly become the hub’s primary operator.

How’s Mexico’s new airport currently doing?

The Felipe Ángeles International Airport was inaugurated in March 2022, following a controversial process that included the cancellation of another airport, the Texcoco International Airport. This new hub is functioning along with Mexico City Benito Juárez International (MEX) and Toluca International (TLC), creating a sort of metropolitan system of airports for the country’s biggest city.

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Between March and September 2022, the Felipe Ángeles Airport had 299,051 passengers, according to data recently released by the country’s Infrastructure, Communications and Transports Secretariat (SICT). In this period, the airport recorded 3,376 flights. For some reason, SICT has not published any data for the international services currently available at NLU. For instance, Conviasa has been flown once a week between Caracas (CCS) and NLU since March, while Copa Airlines and Arajet launched their new international services from Panama City (PTY) and Santo Domingo (SDQ) in September. Maybe next month, we’ll have the first look at the results of the two last routes. Viva Aerobus also expects to operate international flights to Havana (HAV) shortly.

In comparison, MEX received, on average, around 124,000 passengers daily in August, meaning it had the same number of travelers NLU has had in six months in only two and a half days.

Viva Aerobus Inaugural AIFA
Photo: Viva Aerobus.

Despite the low passenger numbers, there is good news

In September, the traffic in and out of NLU boomed. Between March and August, the hub had, on average, 33,535 passengers; then, in September, it increased to 97,839 in just one month.

This is due to several reasons. First, several routes were opened during September, such as flights from NLU to Huatulco, Puerto Escondido, San José del Cabo, and Veracruz (plus the still unacknowledged international services to Panama City and Santo Domingo). Second, some routes that opened in previous months had a substantial increase in the number of carried passengers, such as the services to Guadalajara and Monterrey.

Arajet Boeing 737
Photo: Arajet

Which routes have worked for NLU?

As of November 2022, NLU has 203 weekly flights, averaging 29 departures per day operated by six airlines. The carriers currently flying from this hub are Aeromexico, Arajet, Conviasa, Copa Airlines, Viva Aerobus, and Volaris.

Several routes already have more than one daily flight, such as Aeromexico’s services to Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Cancun (three daily flights each), Volaris’ flights to Cancun (two daily), and Aeromexico’s services to Mérida and Puerto Vallarta (11 and ten flights per week, respectively).

Aeromexico has become the leading carrier in NLU in terms of flights per week (105) and seats available (13,449). Nonetheless, between the six airlines currently operating, Aeromexico has the lowest number of seats per departure, averaging 128.1 seats per flight. Aeromexico mainly operates from NLU with its Embraer E190 fleet, which has a capacity for 98 and 99 passengers (depending on the layout).

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