The new aerodrome, one of the flagship projects of the six-year term, will begin operations on December 1 with confirmed domestic flights from five destinations.
In October 2020, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced the construction of the Felipe Carrillo Puerto Airport in Tulum as part of efforts to reactivate tourism in Mexico. Three years later, the project executed by the National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) will be ready to start operations from December.
Tulum, one of the gems of the Mexican Caribbean, is a town of 33,000 inhabitants located 120 kilometers south of Cancun that has grown exponentially in recent decades at the expense of sun and beach tourism. With an intricate network of cenotes and underground rivers beneath the jungle, fine sandy beaches, and the remains of an ancient Mayan city built on a cliff, it is one of the main destinations in the Riviera Maya, the tourist development that extends from Puerto Morelos (Quintana Roo) to the border with Belize.
With an estimated annual 32,000 operations to transport 5.5 million passengers, the complex, consisting of a military base and a waste management plant, aims to become the second gateway for travelers to southeastern Mexico, second only to Cancun Airport, which in 2022 mobilized 30.3 million passengers and concentrated 40% of international tourism in the first half of 2023. The new airport will also have a main runway of 3,700 meters and 13 positions for commercial flights, as well as a hangar and a wastewater treatment plant.
Inauguration
President López Obrador will travel to Tulum to inaugurate the Felipe Carrillo Puerto airport on December 1, 2023. The opening coincides with the fifth anniversary of his government, so the president stated in his morning conference that he will offer a commemorative message at the event.
Location and Connectivity
The new airport, with an investment of 3.2 billion pesos, is located on a 1,200-hectare site 20 kilometers southwest of downtown Tulum, in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. The main connectivity route for the aerodrome will be a 10.5-kilometer road that will link the complex to federal highway 307, which will serve as a commercial and service corridor. In addition, the airport will connect to sections 5 and 6 of the Maya Train, another flagship project of the six-year term.
The aerodrome, located 76 kilometers from Playa del Carmen, will be the closest to the magical town of Valladolid and the archaeological site of Chichen Itza in Yucatan. It will also facilitate access to the southern Riviera Maya, a less exploited area than its northern counterpart, where large all-inclusive developments and ecotourism parks give way to coastal towns and the northern boundary of the Sian Ka’an Natural Reserve, a unique set of ecosystems where the jungle makes its way through underground rivers, mangroves, and the Mesoamerican Reef, the second-largest coral reef on the planet.
In this first stage, private vehicles will be necessary to reach the airport; however, it is anticipated that transport companies will begin operating in the area soon. The ADO bus company is already considering opening routes to take passengers from the airport to the central areas of Tulum, but work is still underway to define the guidelines for this operation.
Flights to Tulum
In early October, López Obrador announced that Tulum Airport will begin operations on December 1, 2023, under the code TQO assigned by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In August, Aeroméxico and Viva Aerobús announced the first routes that will connect to Tulum Airport: while the country’s flag carrier will offer the route from Mexico City starting in December 2023 and hinted at the opening of four more routes to be confirmed, Viva Aerobús announced that it will connect to Tulum from Monterrey, Guadalajara, Tijuana, Toluca, Felipe Ángeles Airport (AIFA), and Mexico City International Airport. Mexicana de Aviación, the airline recently acquired by the State, announced AIFA and Tulum Airport as venues for its operations, so it will offer national connections from most airports in the country.
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