Regulator Introduces New Rules For Mexico City Airport

July 3, 2017

Mexico's competition commission COFECE has announced measures to reduce delays and cancellations at Mexico City’s main Benito Juárez International Airport.

COFECE said the measures, when implemented, will increase the “transparency, control and criteria” for the use of take-off and landing slots by existing airport users and encourage competition from new entrants to the market.

The changes will stimulate competition by limiting existing airlines from accumulating more airport slots than they need. Slots will also be able to be assigned to or exchanged with other carriers, adding flexibility to airline scheduling.

COFECE said that under current slot allocation procedures 30 percent of the airport’s daily flights are not scheduled until the last moment, leading to uncertainty.

In practice. airlines “choose to market the flights without a previously assigned schedule, without being sure that they will be able to operate them or knowing that they will do so with delays in relation to the timetable marketed,” the commission said.

The airport, which handles over 41 million passengers in 2016, is the main hub for Mexico's largest airline Aeroméxico.

(Airwise)