Although a new airport is always big news, such announcements are not few and far between. Last year the government of India announced it was going to build 17 airports scattered throughout 11 of its 29 states. China has 69 regional airports to be constructed next year, adding to its existing 193.
So when México’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, announced in his second State of the Union address on September 2nd that México City would be getting a new airport, media covered the announcement, as expected. The following day the government unveiled the winning design for a new futuristic airport for the county’s capital.
To me what makes this airport special is the history of the capital city’s airport, the players involved, and the uniqueness of the airport’s design. Since most of my readers live in México, visit it for extended periods of time, or have a particular affinity for the country, I thought I would share some of my thoughts on what its architect, Norman Foster, describes as, “…the first (airport) of its kind in the world.”
Benito Juárez International Airport (IATA: MZT) is Latin America’s second largest airport in terms of passenger traffic, behind Sãn Paulo’s Gaurulhos International Airport. In 2013 it handled 31.5 million passengers; a long way from the leader, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, with 94.4 million passengers. When it comes to aircraft movement (one movement is a takeoff or landing) it is the leader in Latin America with almost 400,000 last year. Again, a minor player when compared to the leader, Hartsfield-Jackson, at almost 1 million.
México City’s airport was opened in 1931 as Balbuena Military Airport with five runways. Twelve years later it officially became an international airport named Aeropuerto Central with its first route to the Los Angeles International Airport serviced by Mexicana airlines. The airport’s name was changed to Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México, (AICM) in 1963.
In 1970 Luis Echeverría was elected president of México. To help meet his campaign promises of helping the poor and to shake off the notion that his political party, the Institutional Revolution Party, did not care about the country’s peasants, Echeverría pumped vast amounts of money into social and economic programs. To provide land for housing for the capital city’s poor, he closed three of AICM’s runways and turned the land into a social housing complex. The remaining two runways happen to be its current configuration.
Most of Echeverria’s other decisions were as ill-conceived as the closure of 60 percent of the airport’s runways and during his term of office the country’s economy almost collapsed.
Due to the airport’s constant growth in both passengers and movement, in 1994 general aviation (all civilian flying other than scheduled passenger airlines) was prohibited from using the facility. Later that year a second terminal for international passengers was opened.
In 2001 then-president Vicente Fox announced a new airport would be constructed on 15,000 hectares of land (37,000 acres) in two municipalities 26 kilometers (16 miles) from downtown México City. The proposed airport would have relocated 4,375 families and converted 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) of farmland.
Peasants from these municipalities resisted their relocation and formed the Community Front in Defense of Land. The protests turned violent, as protesters took hostages and state forces had to negotiate their release. After the federal government was unable to negotiate an agreement with the farmers, plans for the new airport had to be abandoned.
The protesters became instant heroes to poor farmers nationwide. Jorge Montaño, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said Fox was “naïve” to think farmers would easily give up their lands and that his government should have taken more time negotiating with the farmers instead of simply sending out engineers to measure runways and calculate flight paths.
A year later the government announced it would expand the AICM’s terminals, reorganize passengers’ gates, add a new immigration area, and double the size of its international baggage claim area in order to increase the airport’s passenger capacity to 32 million a year from the then 20 million.
In 2006 president Fox renamed the airport after México’s most beloved president, Benito Juárez. Vicente Fox’s term ended before the remodel and expansion of the newly named airport was completed and in 2008 President Felipe Calderón inaugurated the new facility.
However, even with the continuous improvements and constructions the Benito Juárez International Airport is not properly serving its passengers with the appropriate levels of service they expect
The runway system of the AICM consists of the two non-independent runways that are separated by 300 meters (985 ft.). At the end of the day the maximum capacity of this airport is dictated by its runway system. The declared capacity of the runway system is 54 operations per hour or 320,000 a year.
As noted above, in 2013 it had almost 400,000 movements. Additionally, it is bumping into its passenger capacity of 32 million by handling 31.5 million last year. According to current demand, airport authorities estimate that the terminals have a remaining capacity of between 3 or 5 more years. The planning for a new airport has been underway for quite some time due to the impossibility of extending the existing two runways or building new ones.
As the president said in his State of the Union address, “The current saturation restricts communication within the country, limits México’s connectivity to the world, restrains trade and investment, and creates delays for users.”
For most that are aware of the statistics on the airport, Peña Nieto’s announcement was not a surprise; the government really had no other choice. But, what surprised many were the architects chosen for this project, as well as its location.
The new airport is to be constructed on about 4,600 hectares (11,400 acres), which the government already owns, located on a former lakebed about six miles from the present, over-crowded facility. It will have six runways.Upon completion it will have the capacity to handle 120 million passengers.
British architect Norman Foster and his Mexican colleague Fernando Romero had their design chosen for México City’s new $9.2 billion airport.Foster is one of the world’s leading architects and designed Terminal 3 for the Beijing airport, the iconic Swiss Reinsurance Company (Swiss Re) office building in London, and London’s Wembley Stadium. Romero is a son-in-law of Carlos Slim. He was the architect for Carlos Slim’s distinctive Museo Soumaya, which houses much of Slim’s personal art collection behind its sloping, silvery walls.
To back up his statement that the México City airport will be “the first of its kind” Foster notes, “It doesn’t have a conventional roof, it doesn’t have vertical walls. It doesn’t have columns in the normal sense.”
The “green airport” will have 24 water treatment plants, a waste processing system and natural ventilation, all with the purpose of reclaiming a degraded and densely populated area. México’s presidential spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez, said that the new airport would be the first one outside Europe to have a “neutral carbon footprint;” a system that will generate renewable energy and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Seventy percent of the water used at the airport will come from its own water treatment plants, according to officials.
But, as in the past, dissent closely followed the widely photographed design presentations. Ignacio del Valle, one of the main opponents of the airport proposed by the Fox administration and a leader of the Community Front in Defense of Land, said the group plans to prevent the construction of the new airport. He said the new airport would cause pollution four times that of the current airport along with four times the noise, causing the disappearance of communities and the breakdown of the social fabric of the area.
Senator Alejandro Encinas, a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, joined the dissent saying, “It is estimated that more than 120 native species would be in danger of extinction” due to the new airport. The project would be “ecological suicide and a threat to urban development,” he added.
I hope for the sake of México the voices of dissent fail to get the traction they will need to stop the well-conceived and world-class airport that the country so desperately needs and deserves.
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