Skip to main content

New Mexico City airport 'the most advanced worldwide'

The new international airport being built in Mexico City is "probably the most advanced modern airport project worldwide," Dr Bernardo Lisker, international director of The Mitre Corporation, has said. "This is an enormously important project for Mexico, without which the nation's economy would suffer a bottleneck very soon," said Lisker, who will be discussing the technical vision of the airport at BNamericas' Mexico Infrastructure Summit taking place 18–19 February. "Building the new airport in the
February 13, 2015 Read time: 2 mins

The new international airport being built in Mexico City is "probably the most advanced modern airport project worldwide," Dr Bernardo Lisker, international director of The Mitre Corporation, has said.

"This is an enormously important project for Mexico, without which the nation's economy would suffer a bottleneck very soon," said Lisker, who will be discussing the technical vision of the airport at BNamericas' Mexico Infrastructure Summit taking place 18–19 February.

"Building the new airport in the Texcoco area was by far the best alternative," Lisker added. "It will be the first airport in Latin America with simultaneous traffic flow to and from more than one airstrip, and it will be the world's first outside of the US to handle three traffic flows simultaneously."

Costing US$12.5 billion and to be located on a 4,600 hectare site, work on the airport began at the end of December, with developers focusing initially on building access roads and drainage infrastructure, and last month a consortium led by Dutch company Netherlands Airport Consultants (NAICM) won a contract to build runways and platforms and supply navigation equipment, among others.

According to the plans of the communications and transport ministry (SCT), tenders for the construction of the new airport buildings are expected to be published shortly. The first phase of construction includes a new terminal, control tower, 95 gates and three runways with capacity to handle up to 50 million passengers a year.

When complete, the new airport will have six runways and capacity of 120 million passengers a year. The existing Mexico City airport AICM can handle up to 32 million passengers a year but is close to reaching capacity.

Related Content

  • EU project to make urban freight management more sustainable
    February 1, 2012
    Urban freight policies are becoming more common in European cities and regions. However, it is still difficult to evaluate and transfer the knowledge gained from the different city logistics measures implemented by local authorities. The SUGAR project aims to tackle this by establishing a systematic approach towards best practices identification and assessment, and by developing urban freight plans and actions.
  • Europe’s satellite projects ‘late and over budget’
    February 3, 2016
    The French court of Auditors has found that the European satellite navigation programmes, Galileo and EGNOS (the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), the European satellite navigation programmes, will cost the EU more than US$14 billion over the period 1994-2020, says Euractiv. The delayed projects were originally allocated a budget of US$5 billion, according to the auditors. Galileo will cost a total of US$11 billion. Half of this amount had already been spent by the end of 2013. The C
  • A future vision for transport in Wales
    November 13, 2014
    A new report by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Cymru Wales, Vision 2035: Cymru Wales, looks to the future and visualises how transport and logistics in Wales would develop, taking account of population changes, technological developments and social and political change. By 2035, Wales will be making decisions on all aspects of transport, including air passenger duty, rail franchising and road policy. There will also be greater government involvement in public transport operatio
  • Developments in signal head lens technology
    February 3, 2012
    Heads and tails Leading manufacturers of traffic signal systems discuss developments in signal head technology as well as some of the legacy issues which affect future deployments Transparent model of Dambach's ACTROS.line technology, showing the bus electronics in the signal head Cowls could be superseded by the greater use of lens technology