Mexico’s Domestic Airline Industry Facing Challenges

It’s becoming more clear why Mexican government officials have proposed that foreign airlines take over some domestic routes inside the country.

Apparently, Mexico’s domestic airlines are in disarray, due partly to safety issues resulting in a downgrade by U.S. aviation officials in 2021 preventing Mexican airlines from opening new routes to the U.S., problems with how travel advisories have been issued by the U.S. and internal vandalism, according to the Associated Press.

Just this past week, Mexico City International Airport was vandalized with cut fiber optic cables leading into the airport.

“What we do know is that we are stalled,” aviation legal expert Rodrigo Soto-Morales said in an interview with the AP.

Moreover, authorities in Mexico said one of the terminals at the Mexico City airport is literally sinking and in desperate need of repair. The country’s transportation department was also hacked and cannot process paperwork online until next year.

“If something goes wrong, they investigate themselves and say they don’t bear any responsibility,” Rogelio Rodriguez Garduno, an aviation expert who teaches aeronautical law at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, said. “It seems possible that this is a process where we are taking steps backward.”

Soto-Morales and others are calling on the current administration to place a greater emphasis on independent regulatory agencies such as Mexico’s Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC), an office of the Transportation Department.

“In the struggle to regain Category 1 (rating) from the FAA, should start with rethinking or relaunching what the AFAC should be,” Soto-Morales told the AP.