The president of Mexico, A.ndrés Manuel López Obrador, inaugurates this Monday the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), one of his flagship infrastructure projects for the Mexico City metropolitan area. But since its inception the project has flown between controversies.
(You may be interested in: War in Ukraine, about to be a month old, intensifies)
The Aifa is controversial because it replaces the New Mexico International Airport (Naim) since 2018, a modern work of Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term (2012-2018) which in turn aroused criticism for being built on Lake Texcoco and with contracts questioned by alleged corruption.
Before assuming the presidency, López Obrador held a consultation in October 2018 in which only 1.1 million voters participated, 1.23% of the electoral roll at the time, who decided in a proportion of 70% to cancel the Naim, a work of 13,300 million dollars with 30% progress. The then president-elect revived his old proposal to build the airport at the Santa Lucía military air base in Zumpango.
Canceling the Naim cost more than 113,327 million pesos (almost 5,500 million dollars), according to the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF), a state body. But López Obrador, who usually presumes to have “other data”, has assured that with the work in Santa Lucía 125,000 million pesos (about 6,050 million dollars) have been saved.
(Also: The Black Sea, perpetual scene of the Russia-Europe clash)
The Government stated last week that the AIFA will have an official cost of almost 75,000 million pesos (about 3,600 million dollars), although an investigation by the newspaper El Universal calculated the price at almost 116,000 million pesos (just over 5,600 million dollars). of dollars).
The terminal will have a construction of 384,128 square meters that will be able to accommodate 19.5 million passengers and 119,000 operations per year, according to the construction engineer Raúl Miranda Rubalcaba in a previous tour for the media. But the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), the largest opposition force, denounced that it will be a “duck airport” because it will only have 14 aircraft positions, a tenth of Naim’s capacity. The Aifa takes off with only nine air operations of four airlines; three are national.
The snub from international airlines is explained because the International Air Transport Association (Iata) has expressed doubts about the air and land connectivity of the new airport.
EFE
US Submits Resolution to Honor 200 Years of Relations with Colombia
Tense talk between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping over Ukraine
#López #Obrador #inaugurates #controversial #airport #Mexico #City