AIRPORT REPORT: TOLUCA
Mexican wave
Toluca International Airport has experienced its share of highs and lows in recent years, but resurgent passenger traffic and expansion plans point to a new sense of optimism, reports Oliver Clark.
When low-cost carriers first burst onto Mexico’ s commercial aviation scene in the middle of the last decade, one of the big beneficiaries was Toluca’ s Adolfo López Mateos International Airport( TLC).
Located just 40km from Mexico City and boasting good surface links to the capital, Toluca proved an attractive alternative to Mexico City’ s congested Benito Juárez International Airport( MEX) for low-cost carriers( LCCs), and in December 2005 Interjet made Toluca its launch base, followed by Volaris in 2006.
Being the home base for two of Mexico’ s biggest LCCs catapulted TLC into the big league with traffic jumping from two million in 2006 to 3.3 million in 2007 and four million in 2008, and it seemed that Toluca would quickly become Mexico City’ s second airport.
Then disaster struck. The collapse of Mexicana in 2010 opened a gap in the market at MEX; Interjet and Volaris took the opportunity to move the bulk of their operations to the capital gateway, and Aeroméxico, which had launched operations from Toluca in 2009, withdrew less than a year later.
Consequently, TLC’ s traffic slid from a peak in 2008 to 1.5 million in 2011 and fell to less then a million in 2012, opening up the possibility that Toluca would go back to being just another one of Mexico’ s regional airports.
Toluca’ s fortunes appear to have improved dramatically in recent months, however, with carriers including Aeroméxico, VivaAerobus and US carrier Spirit breathing new life into its terminals.
Aeromexico launched services to Guadalajara and Monterrey in February, followed by Acapulco, Spirit Airlines operates international flights to Dallas / Fort Worth and Fort Lauderdale.
Such is the spirit of optimism about the future that Toluca’ s management are preparing a new masterplan that could see the building of a new runway and terminal over the next two years to deal with increased passenger demand, which is forecast to hit 5.5 million by 2015. Speaking to Javier García Bejos, CEO of TLC, it is clear why he is so confident about the gateway’ s future.
“ Toluca Airport is a very uncommon airport in Mexico because it’ s the only one that shares the market with Mexico City International Airport and we have a huge challenge handling that demand because, as you know, Mexico City is completely saturated.
“ Over the next 10 years Toluca International will grow faster than any other airport in Mexico,” he predicts.
According to Bejos, Toluca’ s role as an alternative to Mexico City has never been more relevant. MEX handle nearly 30 million passengers in the 12 months to February 2013 and is at saturation point, and Bejos believes that a key enticement of Toluca is that the small airport facility offers a much less stressful and friendly passenger experience compared to its bigger neighbour.
“ We have a culture of service. What we are doing and saying in the market is‘ Fly easy, fly Toluca’ which is not just aimed at passengers but also airlines.
16 AIRPORT WORLD / APRIL-MAY 2013