The Mexico City International Airport (AICM) served three million 249,487 passengers (national and international) during January, which represented an increase of 56.6% compared to the same month of 2021 and a decrease of 22.8% compared to January 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was not yet wreaking havoc.
A month earlier, in December 2021, the country’s main air terminal served 4,059,464 people, the best month of the entire year, which showed a sustained recovery.
However, the fourth wave of the pandemic (caused by the Ómicron variant) caused Aeroméxico to cancel more than 500 flights in the first month of the year, which had an impact on the number of passengers served. Some members of their crews were infected and could not work, as happened in other countries.
On January 7, given the uncertainty caused by changes in itineraries, the group reported: The most important thing for us is that you arrive at your destination on time and we regret that due to the new Ómicron variant, your flight has been affected. Some members of their crews were infected.
Four days earlier, based on information from the AICM, the day with the highest number of passengers served was recorded: 142,977.
Contrary to what happened to Aeroméxico, which has its operations center, in other airlines the impact of contagion was minimal. An example of this is Volaris, the ultra-low-cost company that leads the national industry.
“We started the year with strong traffic results, stimulating demand in our main leisure travel and friends and family visitor (VFR) markets, while carefully managing capacity in response to Ómicron. It is important to mention that we fulfilled our commitment to Volaris customers and maintained high reliability in our flight schedules despite the industry-wide operational problems caused by the Omicron variant”, he explained.
less international
During the first month of the year, the two million 211,936 national passengers who used the AICM represented an increase of 41.6% compared to January 2021, but a drop of 18.4% compared to 2020, which showed that the recovery was driven by the domestic flights.
Meanwhile, international passengers in January totaled one million 037,551 people, 101.8% more than in the previous year, but when compared to 2020 the drop is 30.8 percent.
