Cancun International Airport is still growing in size, this time with a large runway expansion, and future plans for a fifth terminal.

For now, Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR) is spending 266.5 million pesos / $US14 million on a pair of taxiways, giving aircraft more room to maneuver. The project should also reduce runway time and allow planes to avoid 180-degree turns after landing.

The expansion takes up nearly 11,000 hectares / 27,000 acres. It will take two years to complete construction. The airport administration filed an environmental impact statement to Semarnat, the federal environmental agency, at the end of April.

The management group is carrying out its “most aggressive” investment plan ever to make Cancun International Airport a major travel hub.

“Cancún must become a hub. Nowadays it’s a destination. What I want to achieve is that besides being a destination; you can go to Buenos Aires, Panama, Puerto Rico or Miami through that airport,” said ASUR Chairman Fernando Chico Pardo.

ASUR sees the Mayan Train as another reason to continue upgrades at Mexico’s second-largest airport. As for the group’s involvement in the 150-billion peso / US$7.8 billion Yucatan rail project, Chico Pardo told El Universal, “We’re going to build the train station (at the airport) and then help [the government] in whatever way we can.”

He said ASUR is planning a fifth terminal for Cancún airport, which received over 11 million passengers in the 12 months through May, up 2.3 percent from the same period between 2017-18.

In 2017, the group opened the airport’s fourth terminal, which Chico Pardo said is expected to handle 8.5 million passengers a year.

Source: YEL

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