Mexico City International Airport (AICM) will undergo minor surgery. The main gateway to the country announced this Tuesday that one of its two runways will close for five days for “scheduled maintenance” during the early morning hours. The facilities reported last weekend a pothole that affected 35 flights, including that of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The AICM drags months of complaints about flight delays and with the registration of several incidents, and recently changed its director.
Maintenance work begins this Tuesday and will last until Sunday. Every day, the rink will be closed from 11:00 p.m. to 5:50 a.m. The schedule is designed to affect “operations as little as possible,” according to a statement from the AICM. In addition to this scheduled maintenance during the early morning, each of the two tracks will close this Tuesday and Wednesday for half an hour, from 10.30 to 11.30. This “weekly review” aims to “know the physical conditions” of the tracks, according to the authorities.
The announcement comes a few days after a pothole was reported that forced one of the tracks to close for ten hours. Last Sunday, the airport authorities revealed that the rains and the landing of the planes had caused the “detachment of gravel” in the touch zone of the devices. “As it is a critical area, it requires immediate repair,” they said. The works took two hours longer than expected due to heavy rain. In total, 35 flights were affected and three of them had to be cancelled.
Among the affected passengers was López Obrador, who was returning to the capital after one of his weekend tours of the States. “We were arriving. The plane was about to take the runway and suddenly it diverts and goes for a turn and we are already down but before that the pilot says because of the sound: ´We apologize but there is only one runway at the Mexico City airport. The other runway is closed because they inform us that they found a crater,” the president said on Monday.
López Obrador took the opportunity to criticize the conditions of the airport, despite the fact that it is managed by his government. “There was a fraud there, in Terminal 2, it has sinkholes, in addition to the fact that the land is not the most suitable,” he said. Although he blamed previous administrations for the AICM’s problems, his government dismissed the airport director just two weeks ago and replaced him with a military man, Vice Admiral Carlos Ignacio Velázquez.
In recent months, the management of the AICM has been the object of multiple criticisms due to the apparent neglect of the facilities and the constant delays in flights. In the same week in mid-May, two planes had to take flight when they were about to land because another plane was occupying the runway. These incidents, described as “serious” by the Government and widely reported on social networks, led to the resignation of the head of Navigation Services in the Mexican Air Space (Seneam), the body responsible for air traffic controllers.
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