Mexico City Needs New Airport, Tourism Execs Say

The CNT group representing Mexico's tourism industry said Monday that the construction of a new international airport for this sprawling capital is "unpostponable."

The existing facility is inadequate for the roughly 20 million residents of Greater Mexico City, the organization said, calling the airport's recently opened Terminal 2 "a temporary remedy for seven to 10 years."

Terminal 2 cost about $788 million and, when it is fully functional, it will allow the capital airport to incease its operations from 54 to 61 flights per hour.

"It's no longer possible to postpone such an important and necessary project for one of the world's largest cities," CNT president Miguel Torruco emphasized in the statement.

As an example of the inadequacy of the capital's present air travel facility, the tourist organization said that in the high-traffic period of the day there is "a line of up to 18 aircraft (waiting) to take off, and thus a 40-minute flight is extended to up to an hour-and-a-half."

"The distances between aircraft that land and take off is being reduced, such that operations are being carried out at the limit of the optimal security conditions established by the International Civil Aviation Organization," it warned.

According to the CNT, last year, 25.8 million passengers used Mexico City International, which was an increase of 4.7 percent with respect to 2006.

As favorable sites for the construction of a new facility, the CNT singled out the municipality of Texcoco, near the Mexican capital, and a nearby site in the central state of Hidalgo.

The 2000-2006 government of President Vicente Fox tried unsuccessfully in 2002 to build a new airport in the capital-area town of San Salvador Atenco, but a wave of sometimes-violent protests by peasants whose land would have had to be expropriated for the work forced the cancellation of the project.

For now, the current administration of Felipe Calderon, had acknowledged that it is studying what site to select on which to build a new airport for the capital.