Being constructed as we speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... p44Y6cR-YY

Have a feeling it will spawn a new design theme for airports around the world.

Wow looks brilliant - going to be the most impressive airport in North America easily

The other game changer will be the new Istanbul airport

a little bit similar to Guangzhou airport.

william wrote:

Being constructed as we speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... p44Y6cR-YY

Have a feeling it will spawn a new design theme for airports around the world.

Looks great! I did not know about this one. Thanks for posting!

Galwayman wrote:

Wow looks brilliant - going to be the most impressive airport in North America easily

Pifft. Have you ever even been to LGA?

Beautiful, so organic in design!

When will it open ?

When you fly in to MEX now, you generally pass by the new site. You can see the building outline already. It's quite the sight!

It's supposed to start operations in 2020.

dz09 wrote:

a little bit similar to Guangzhou airport.

It doesn't look like Guangzhouat all. Maybe you are thinking Chongqing

stburke wrote:

Galwayman wrote:

Wow looks brilliant - going to be the most impressive airport in North America easily

Pifft. Have you ever even been to LGA?

The Current MEX airport is as awful as LGA but with an extra 14M passengers/year. A new MEX is long overdue.

aerolimani wrote:

When you fly in to MEX now, you generally pass by the new site. You can see the building outline already. It's quite the sight!

It's supposed to start operations in 2020.

2021 will be a more realistic opening date.

KrustyTheKlown wrote:

The Current MEX airport is as awful as LGA but with an extra 14M passengers/year. A new MEX is long overdue.

Will the new airport replace the current one or will the airports operate together serving Mexico City?

It is beautiful indeed.

It is my understanding that construction is significantly behind schedule (not that anyone familiar with the Mexican public sector way of doing things should be surprised by this). Moreover, the presidential candidate who is ahead in the polls has threatened to cancel the project in order to continue using the current MEX and also adapt the Santa Lucía Air Force base for civilian operations so as to become the second Mexico City airport. Hopefully he won't get elected and if he does he won't follow through with this.

It will replace the current one, mostly for technical reasons, as flight paths might intersect. Actual MEX will close at the same time the first flight lands at new MEX. The old MEX will be urbanized; a park, residential and commercial development are considered. Some say a transportation hub will be also built to ease transit between the new MEX and Mexico City and neighboring cities and communities.

And as for that awful candidate, he seems to be mostly OK with the airport, or so I heard lately. He is, clearly, clueless on this subjetct.

Mortyman wrote:

When will it open ?

Probably before Berlin...

That is a great looking design.

EddieDude wrote:

It is beautiful indeed.

It is my understanding that construction is significantly behind schedule (not that anyone familiar with the Mexican public sector way of doing things should be surprised by this). Moreover, the presidential candidate who is ahead in the polls has threatened to cancel the project in order to continue using the current MEX and also adapt the Santa Lucía Air Force base for civilian operations so as to become the second Mexico City airport. Hopefully he won't get elected and if he does he won't follow through with this.

It seems the only airport components that that are significantly behind schedule are the 3rd runway and the short term parking building. The airport could open with only 2 runways, but I don't imagine it opening without parking facilities. The most optimistic projections for the parking building indicate it won't be ready before the end of 2020 and the soil-improvement works for the 3rd runway just recently started.

How many gates will the new MEX have and how does that compare with the current MEX? I would say they would need to increase gate space by at least 50% from current.

yellowtail wrote:

How many gates will the new MEX have and how does that compare with the current MEX? I would say they would need to increase gate space by at least 50% from current.

it says 95 gates

That does look beautiful, and way more spacious than the current MEX.

Just too bad that I'd rather avoid Aeromexico unless they have another dirt cheap error fare, so probably I'll never get the chance to connect in the new MEX

paparrucho wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp44Y6cR-YY

You added a link to the exact same video that the OP did.

It won't be 2021. In fact it may be never. Elections are up-coming and some of the progressive candidates don't want to spend the $ on a new airport. What you see from the air essentially are outlines. Interestingly, there's one confirmed report of a plane lining up to land on one of the fake runways.

n7371f wrote:

It won't be 2021. In fact it may be never. Elections are up-coming and some of the progressive candidates don't want to spend the $ on a new airport. What you see from the air essentially are outlines. Interestingly, there's one confirmed report of a plane lining up to land on one of the fake runways.

Quite a few issues with your comment:

- The anti-airport candidate is not a progressive, AMLO is a 70's style Mexican populist and his platform is so non-progressive that he wants to re-open coal power plants (despite the fact that Mexico will have to import coal to fuel them) and formed a coalition with an anti-gay party.
- His advisors are hinting they want him to flip on the airport issue as he has already flipped in lots of issues.
- What you see from the air are not outlines but rather very extensive soil-improvement and foundation works. In fact the structures of the terminal and control tower should be at least 70% complete by the time the next president takes office. Scrapping all this would easily cost 7+ Billion dollars.
- I really doubt there's such thing as a "report of a plane lining up to land on one of the fake runways" as their heading it's very different from the one used by the old MEX airport and there are not general aviation ops in MEX.

This drone video shows what's the real situation on the new airport site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EpnEllrkAA (to give some sense of scale the terminal is going to be almost 1 mile from tip to tip and the runways are 16,400 ft / 5km long meaning that the airport site covers an area larger than the currently used by Istanbul's or Beijing's new airports).

What a stunningly beautiful design. It's almost looks like it's biomimicking a slime mold, or something like that. I hope this airport opens on time, I connect frequently in MEX from SLC onwards to LatAm. I hope the election nonsense doesn't get in the way of this. The current MEX is horrible.

But oh my God, the fees are unacceptable. They are currently trying to raise the PFCs to $51.

KrustyTheKlown wrote:

n7371f wrote:

It won't be 2021. In fact it may be never. Elections are up-coming and some of the progressive candidates don't want to spend the $ on a new airport. What you see from the air essentially are outlines. Interestingly, there's one confirmed report of a plane lining up to land on one of the fake runways.

Quite a few issues with your comment:

- The anti-airport candidate is not a progressive, AMLO is a 70's style Mexican populist and his platform is so non-progressive that he wants to re-open coal power plants (despite the fact that Mexico will have to import coal to fuel them) and formed a coalition with an anti-gay party.
- His advisors are hinting they want him to flip on the airport issue as he has already flipped in lots of issues.
- What you see from the air are not outlines but rather very extensive soil-improvement and foundation works. In fact the structures of the terminal and control tower should be at least 70% complete by the time the next president takes office. Scrapping all this would easily cost 7+ Billion dollars.
- I really doubt there's such thing as a "report of a plane lining up to land on one of the fake runways" as their heading it's very different from the one used by the old MEX airport and there are not general aviation ops in MEX.

This drone video shows what's the real situation on the new airport site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EpnEllrkAA (to give some sense of scale the terminal is going to be almost 1 mile from tip to tip and the runways are 16,400 ft / 5km long meaning that the airport site covers an area larger than the currently used by Istanbul's or Beijing's new airports).

You speak as if this airport is not another example of the extreme corruption that has been ongoing in EPN´s government, which is the real reason AMLO wants to scrap this project in the first place.

This airport was built right on top of the TEXCOCO lake, so any major earthquake will create severe sand liquefaction and sand volcanoes, which will basically destroy it. This is a monumental waste of money of the Mexican taxpayers money and probably never be able to begin operations, that´s how the current party has dilapidated the Mexican people´s vast resources over the past century.

http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/bloomber ... ria-no-ser

The new MEX...omg! I could write 4 pages on how bad the whole thing is, but just the fact that it lies below the current MEX and its prone to flooding and has an Active Volcano 45 miles away and a body of water known to attract migratory birds...is enough! just as a fantasy you can see in the Video where there is an Aeromexico 747..... FAKE and yep a monument to the corruption of the Mexican government..

Best regards
TRB

Wayfarer515 wrote:

KrustyTheKlown wrote:

n7371f wrote:

It won't be 2021. In fact it may be never. Elections are up-coming and some of the progressive candidates don't want to spend the $ on a new airport. What you see from the air essentially are outlines. Interestingly, there's one confirmed report of a plane lining up to land on one of the fake runways.

Quite a few issues with your comment:

- The anti-airport candidate is not a progressive, AMLO is a 70's style Mexican populist and his platform is so non-progressive that he wants to re-open coal power plants (despite the fact that Mexico will have to import coal to fuel them) and formed a coalition with an anti-gay party.
- His advisors are hinting they want him to flip on the airport issue as he has already flipped in lots of issues.
- What you see from the air are not outlines but rather very extensive soil-improvement and foundation works. In fact the structures of the terminal and control tower should be at least 70% complete by the time the next president takes office. Scrapping all this would easily cost 7+ Billion dollars.
- I really doubt there's such thing as a "report of a plane lining up to land on one of the fake runways" as their heading it's very different from the one used by the old MEX airport and there are not general aviation ops in MEX.

This drone video shows what's the real situation on the new airport site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EpnEllrkAA (to give some sense of scale the terminal is going to be almost 1 mile from tip to tip and the runways are 16,400 ft / 5km long meaning that the airport site covers an area larger than the currently used by Istanbul's or Beijing's new airports).

You speak as if this airport is not another example of the extreme corruption that has been ongoing in EPN´s government, which is the real reason AMLO wants to scrap this project in the first place.

This airport was built right on top of the TEXCOCO lake, so any major earthquake will create severe sand liquefaction and sand volcanoes, which will basically destroy it. This is a monumental waste of money of the Mexican taxpayers money and probably never be able to begin operations, that´s how the current party has dilapidated the Mexican people´s vast resources over the past century.

http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/bloomber ... ria-no-ser

AMLO doesn't want to cancel the airport as an anti-corruption move, if he were truly anti-corruption he would appoint a special auditor/prosecutor to investigate the legality of every single airport contract. AMLO wants to cancel it so he can give the contracts to builders aligned with his party. His airport proposal was made by a José Riobóo, whose company lost the tender for designing the new airport's runways due to lack of expertise building airports and his proposal was 30% expensive than the company that won the tender. Furthermore AMLO's proposal is little more than a powerpoint presentation as he doesn't even have an air space study, much less the actual design of an airport (trust me, I read the book his party published "detailing" his airport proposal and it doesn't contain a single technical study, it's just political posturing and diagrams made with powerpoint).

You know what else is right on top of the Texcoco lake? the old MEX airport and Santa Lucia base (AMLO's proposed airport site). With the big difference that no soil-improvement works were made in either site and so their soil is effectively more unsuitable for an airport than the one that is under construction.

Also you don't really seem to known the geology of the site as there's no sand on it (so no sand volcanos) and the article you linked doesn't support a single one of your complaints.

I'm not fan of the Texcoco site, but excluding the Tizayuca airport proposal it's the "less worse" option for an airport in the Mexico city area.

TheRedBaron wrote:

The new MEX...omg! I could write 4 pages on how bad the whole thing is, but just the fact that it lies below the current MEX and its prone to flooding and has an Active Volcano 45 miles away and a body of water known to attract migratory birds...is enough! just as a fantasy you can see in the Video where there is an Aeromexico 747..... FAKE and yep a monument to the corruption of the Mexican government..

Best regards
TRB

Actually the old airport it's more prone to flooding than the new airport. The new airport is 2235-2240m above sea level while the old airport is 2225-2230m above sea level and both airports are at exactly the same distance from the Popocatepetl volcano.

Migratory birds are also an issue with the current airport.. and with 100's of airports world wide. Even the Tizayuca airport proposal would have problems with migratory birds due to it's proximity to the Zumpango lake.

Definitely a beautiful design. However, the very organic, free-flowing shape does not look ideal for future expansion.

zrh177 wrote:

Definitely a beautiful design. However, the very organic, free-flowing shape does not look ideal for future expansion.

Yeah I totally agree with your comments and although the terminal looks great and also l huge there doesn't appear to be a large amount of gates, how many will the new airport have!

Do the gates have windows?

Lack of windows is my #1 peave with Mexican airports...

Wayfarer515 wrote:

KrustyTheKlown wrote:

Wayfarer515 wrote:

You speak as if this airport is not another example of the extreme corruption that has been ongoing in EPN´s government, which is the real reason AMLO wants to scrap this project in the first place.

This airport was built right on top of the TEXCOCO lake, so any major earthquake will create severe sand liquefaction and sand volcanoes, which will basically destroy it. This is a monumental waste of money of the Mexican taxpayers money and probably never be able to begin operations, that´s how the current party has dilapidated the Mexican people´s vast resources over the past century.

http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/bloomber ... ria-no-ser

AMLO doesn't want to cancel the airport as an anti-corruption move, if he were truly anti-corruption he would appoint a special auditor/prosecutor to investigate the legality of every single airport contract. AMLO wants to cancel it so he can give the contracts to builders aligned with his party. His airport proposal was made by a José Riobóo, whose company lost the tender for designing the new airport's runways due to lack of expertise building airports and his proposal was 30% expensive than the company that won the tender. Furthermore AMLO's proposal is little more than a powerpoint presentation as he doesn't even have an air space study, much less the actual design of an airport (trust me, I read the book his party published "detailing" his airport proposal and it doesn't contain a single technical study, it's just political posturing and diagrams made with powerpoint).

You know what else is right on top of the Texcoco lake? the old MEX airport and Santa Lucia base (AMLO's proposed airport site). With the big difference that no soil-improvement works were made in either site and so their soil is effectively more unsuitable for an airport than the one that is under construction.

Also you don't really seem to known the geology of the site as there's no sand on it (so no sand volcanos) and the article you linked doesn't support a single one of your complaints.

I'm not fan of the Texcoco site, but excluding the Tizayuca airport proposal it's the "less worse" option for an airport in the Mexico city area.

TFA i linked was not interested to show any of the geological aspects, but you can study by yourself what the bottom of a lake is composed of.

The article was meant to show the corruption of the current government, and its sheer incompetence to do anything but stealing the taxpayers' money. I also dont see you rebutting anything that is mentioned in it, so I will guess you are just one of Pena Nietos cronies.

If that was your intent you should probably "study [spanish] by yourself". As the article doesn't say anything about corruption in the new airport and it actually includes the opinion that AMLO's airport it's a terrible solution, I will help you with a quick translation:

...
"The proposal is only viable short term and it's logistically very complex", said Schtulmann regarding Lopez Obrador's proposal. "He likes to paint himself as a tough character, but if he wins the election he would have to take a different position. The issue is that after the project has started it would be very difficult to cancel it".
...

He says that the proposal has no long term viability because the airspace in Mexico city will become very congested if Santa Lucia were to become a civilian airport, the issue it's approach paths as both airports would have to share the same and only approach path due to the many mountains that surround the city, resulting in that circa 2030 the city will once again lack enough airport capacity to satisfy demand (we can say: 1 step forward, 2 steps back). This problem is completely absent from the new airport under construction as the heading of its runways will allow 3 approach paths for landings in 35R, 36L and 01R : 1 from the south and 2 from the north following both ends of the valley before turning to land (i.e. parallel to the western and eastern mountain ranges). Likewise, approach paths for landings in 17L, 18R and 19L are unobstructed by mountains.

As you seem so poorly informed and unwilling to not stop being so I will help you by telling you what the soil it's made of: silt, the same silt that makes most of the soil in which Mexico city was built as well as the old airport and Santa Lucia air force base. This means the apocalyptic scenarios you wrote in your first post are not possible, and if they were AMLO's proposed airport would have the same problem.

And BTW I'm not anybody's crony, I'm just an aviation enthusiast and I don't even work in this industry or any branch of government. You seem to have become very angry when I pointed out the name of one of AMLO's cronies so it's understandably you are projecting your insecurities into me.

KrustyTheKlown wrote:

And BTW I'm not anybody's crony, I'm just an aviation enthusiast and I don't even work in this industry or any branch of government. You seem to have become very angry when I pointed out the name of one of AMLO's cronies so it's understandably you are projecting your insecurities into me.

I agree, but really anyone with a little intelligence should know better than believing anything someone like AMLO says.....

Looks similar to the new terminal at IST, and someone like Daxing in China.

stburke wrote:

Galwayman wrote:

Wow looks brilliant - going to be the most impressive airport in North America easily

Pifft. Have you ever even been to LGA?

This is the concept of a cheap and very efficient airport that AMLO (El Pejeii Alligator) wants for Mexico City. This airport is been designed by Sergio Mayer and former Soccer Player Cuahuhtemoc Blanco. According to him they would put a tianguis market around the runway and all the money saved with this airport would be use to for those ninis, kids or teenagers that don't work, study and spend all they doing nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGvQ_ISHLzM

Beautiful.
Graet for the AM/DL joint venture going forward.

http://www.proceso.com.mx/498184/las-mi ... aeropuerto

http://www.milenio.com/region/nuevo-aer ... 99237.html
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017 ... arlos-slim

The new airport is lower than the actual dumpster we have, the former water conservation ministry was quite pissed because the recycling plants that they bought for millions of dollars, were useless and could not be relocated, because the water recovered was being dumped to the lakebed where the NEW airport is being constructed, Millions have been spent only on leveling the ground, there is no clear infrastructure to be able to access the building without congestion. All in All is a monument to corruption, because the airport was being considered since the 80´s and nobody proposed the place now is being constructed because it was a disaster and the price to level it and its soil was tot problematic and expensive to use, do you really think NOBODY thought that they could build it right next to the old MEX?

I leave you with a very nice video of last year flood of the current airport...
http://www.transponder1200.com/video-se ... de-mexico/

TheRedBaron wrote:

...
The new airport is lower than the actual dumpster we have, the former water conservation ministry was quite pissed because the recycling plants that they bought for millions of dollars, were useless and could not be relocated, because the water recovered was being dumped to the lakebed where the NEW airport is being constructed, ...

You can check google earth if you doubt it, but the fact is that the old airport is more prone to flooding than the new airport because it is located 10 m lower.

The former water resources minister (Luege) was pissed the Texcoco site was selected because in the previous administration he pushed for the construction of the "casa colorada" pumping station and reservoir to make the Texcoco site unsuitable as an airport while some speculate he acquired land near the Tizayuca site. Anyway, only a small part of the 35L and 35R runways overlap the area occupied by casa colorada reservoir.

The casa colorada pumping station was reconfigured to pump water to the "dren general del valle" and the waste water tunnels under construction so it's not going to.. waste.

Updates - massive contract has been signed with a contractor. Planned to be opened in two years (ambitious for whole new airport if you ask me).

Mar-2018. Mexico's Government announced Grupo Aeroportuario de Mexico City (GACM) awarded a MXN7.1 billion (USD383 million) contract to a consortium comprising ICA Constructora, ICA Constructora de Infraestructura, Compañía Constructora Más and ICA Fluor Daniel, for apron area development at New Mexico City International Airport. The scope of the contract includes construction terminal platforms, MRO areas, a cargo terminal and the satellite building.

I don't expect the new airport to open before Q2 2021, a delay of at least 6 months over the planned 20-OCT-2020 opening date.

Construction started on 2015. This is how the terminal looks like at the moment:

The latest presidential election polls place AMLO as Mexico's next president; the elections are a scant 2.5 weeks away. This apparently delusional man will rule the nation, representing Mexico's almost 125 million people, North America's second-largest after the U.S. (!) and attempt to slow-down, derail, or even stop the country's most important, most strategic infrastructure project in development. What risk is there of such an political outcome occurring next month in Mexico? What will happen to this project should that man win the election?

Most politicians would probably just go ahead with the project citing "prohibitive costs" if they were to cancel it at this stage. If Mexican politicians are as you guys put them, then they have no problem pissing on campaign promises.

PDPsol wrote:

The latest presidential election polls place AMLO as Mexico's next president; the elections are a scant 2.5 weeks away. This apparently delusional man will rule the nation, representing Mexico's almost 125 million people, North America's second-largest after the U.S. (!) and attempt to slow-down, derail, or even stop the country's most important, most strategic infrastructure project in development. What risk is there of such an political outcome occurring next month in Mexico? What will happen to this project should that man win the election?

Make the US pay for it! The US will pay for the wall..err..I mean airport

Only if BA really kept their 744s that clean!

EPA001 wrote:

KrustyTheKlown wrote:

The Current MEX airport is as awful as LGA but with an extra 14M passengers/year. A new MEX is long overdue.

Will the new airport replace the current one or will the airports operate together serving Mexico City?

It will replace the current airport. They are too close together to have dual ops.

^^ Thanks for your reply.

PDPsol wrote:

The latest presidential election polls place AMLO as Mexico's next president; the elections are a scant 2.5 weeks away. This apparently delusional man will rule the nation, representing Mexico's almost 125 million people, North America's second-largest after the U.S. (!) and attempt to slow-down, derail, or even stop the country's most important, most strategic infrastructure project in development. What risk is there of such an political outcome occurring next month in Mexico? What will happen to this project should that man win the election?

The TRUE REASON behind AMLO's heavy criticizing of the new airport is because one of his close friends José María Rioboó was NOT awarded the 52.6 million contract to build the airport runways, this was exposed by rival candidate Ricardo Anaya in the last presidential debate two weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVe31CBtOc

Jose Maria Riobooó was directly awarded several contracts in Mexico City's when AMLO was mayor from 2000-2006 without a bid process.

Looks nice. However, with all that huge space it needs travelators. Lots of them. I don't see it in CGI.

Venatt wrote:

PDPsol wrote:

The latest presidential election polls place AMLO as Mexico's next president; the elections are a scant 2.5 weeks away. This apparently delusional man will rule the nation, representing Mexico's almost 125 million people, North America's second-largest after the U.S. (!) and attempt to slow-down, derail, or even stop the country's most important, most strategic infrastructure project in development. What risk is there of such an political outcome occurring next month in Mexico? What will happen to this project should that man win the election?

The TRUE REASON behind AMLO's heavy criticizing of the new airport is because one of his close friends José María Rioboó was NOT awarded the 52.6 million contract to build the airport runways, this was exposed by rival candidate Ricardo Anaya in the last presidential debate two weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVe31CBtOc

Jose Maria Riobooó was directly awarded several contracts in Mexico City's when AMLO was mayor from 2000-2006 without a bid process.

Certainly good to know WHY this candidate wants to cancel the nation's most important infrastructure project. However, the question is WHAT WILL HAPPEN, will this candidate win the election and, if he does, what will happen to the CDMEX project? Both questions are, of course, inherently political, reflecting the deep influence policy makers have on the commercial aviation industry, particularly in Latin America. Have yet to see viable responses to the question, the elections are next Sunday, very soon!

Venatt wrote:

PDPsol wrote:

The latest presidential election polls place AMLO as Mexico's next president; the elections are a scant 2.5 weeks away. This apparently delusional man will rule the nation, representing Mexico's almost 125 million people, North America's second-largest after the U.S. (!) and attempt to slow-down, derail, or even stop the country's most important, most strategic infrastructure project in development. What risk is there of such an political outcome occurring next month in Mexico? What will happen to this project should that man win the election?

The TRUE REASON behind AMLO's heavy criticizing of the new airport is because one of his close friends José María Rioboó was NOT awarded the 52.6 million contract to build the airport runways, this was exposed by rival candidate Ricardo Anaya in the last presidential debate two weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVe31CBtOc

Jose Maria Riobooó was directly awarded several contracts in Mexico City's when AMLO was mayor from 2000-2006 without a bid process.

Check post #26, I basically said the same 3 months ago and went into a fight an AMLO fan over the very well know corruption of the "anti-corruption" candidate.