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l International Airport Felipe Ángeles (AIFA) will be a very worthy work for most Mexicans. The tens of thousands of weekly visitors think so. There is no glitz or extravagance in it. But neither will it cause other people’s sorrows and less regrets. There is, yes, what is necessary and something more, to serve the interests or desires of travelers and to satisfy the demands of transportation in any of its forms by air. It will not be, at least for now, an ambitious complex of operations ( hub) as they bid modernizers
for converting to the frustrated attempt of Texcoco. The AIFA was born without any debt. It was funded from the federal budget and savings from spending efficiency over these three and a half years.
The AIFA is deployed in an area of more than 400 hectares within a huge reserved space of more than 1,500. This land also houses a military city with everything necessary to ensure its own operation and, at the same time, serve as a parapet for security contingencies. The military find, in this operational deployment, rooms, a hotel, a shopping and convention center and the airfield itself. The sailors have schools of specialties of their own right there.
The airport has been provided with everything that is necessary for an efficient performance of its tasks. Two control centers were installed there. One for the surveillance of its two enormous runways and other complementary routes. Everything is visible on huge screens. The other monitors the movement of people, cargo (warehouses included) and objects (suitcases), which receive attention to detail that will make it safe and smooth. Priority issues to upgrade as your operations grow. These will already have all the trained personnel and the required technology. Its control tower is a receptacle of capacities that will make takeoffs, arrivals and transit an efficient continuum.
Basic lines cannot be forgotten: electricity generation or handling of fuels and customs. In the first, they have ample installation for redundancies, essential in sensitive areas. Four large generators purchased for Texcoco were used. A photovoltaic farm of good capacity and of complete national manufacture was installed. It differs from all the others that have been installed in the country, where only the aluminum frames are. The rest is imported, due to the lack of essential applied research. Regarding fuel management, an entire maneuvering yard was designed, both to receive and to load what the planes and other vehicles require. Large warehouses guarantee continuous supply: there are three huge tanks. There is an additional one for water. The laboratory that will work on the strict and correct application of the established standards is well equipped and has qualified personnel. Even the fire station prides itself on its large cars for dealing with fires or critical emergencies. For now it has half of its planned capacities but they can easily increase them.
As for the airport building itself, the architectural design is sober and equipped with ample facilities to allow the smooth flow of departing and arriving travelers. This includes, of course, platforms, waiting rooms, connecting bridges and auxiliary areas: bathrooms that go a little beyond their normal implements for attractive decorations. Here it is worth mentioning the museum, not only of the hundreds of mammoths that were found in the vicinity of Lake Zumpango. Also bears, saber-toothed tigers, horses, camels, lions and bulls of enormous size. All this, unfortunately extinct. Account in the vicinity with another museum: one of the air, where many models of aircraft are exhibited.
One cannot help but remember the fierce opposition, which still persists, in the media and through the art of opinocracy. The hill where the planes were going to crash, the nonexistent planning of the space for approaches and takeoffs. All this crumbles even with a crash. Continue with epithets to categorize the AIFA as a small town, as a trucking center and other daily criticisms that are thrown at it, are treading on the credibility of its issuers. The internal roads and even its decoration belie such sayings of opinion makers who do not know it. Precisely, and on any given day, with heavy traffic (one hour maximum), it connects, from the Mexiquense Circuit or the highway to Pachuca, with the new stretch of highway, totally finished –concrete, by the way– that leads to arrivals or departures platforms. The train that will leave Balbuena and the connection with Benito Juárez are missing, but work has not stopped on it. This implies, without a doubt, the effective performance of the current government.
