They say that there is nothing more permanent than the ephemeral; that is, something that is supposed to be provisional ends up becoming the only certain thing. That is what is happening with the Mexico City International Airport (AICM), an infrastructure that has endured decades of studies and half-move decisions, but remains old and narrow, fighting the battle.
It would be almost impossible to describe in this short space the many extensions, changes, readjustments and others that have been made to this air port in its several decades of life, but in 2007 Terminal 2 was incorporated, with the idea since then , that it be replaced by the new airport that would be built at some point in Texcoco. As we already know, this change did not happen, but long before the AICM ceased to be the object of improvements with the idea of leaving all the efforts and resources to the new infrastructure.
Already when it was decided to cancel Texcoco, a strong operation would have been expected to give life to the AICM because -we were told in many ways- the airport of the Santa Lucía base was going to coexist with it, so it was logical that they would have allocated resources to maintenance, improvements, extensions and even the construction of a new terminal (T3) that even had engineering proposals.
The truth is that the AICM ceased to be a priority, to the extent that today it is imperative to do something to restore at least a little dignity. Leaks, broken mosaics, worn sheetrock walls with holes, etc. are proverbial. That in what passengers can see. And in what is not, the drains, the structural subsidence, deteriorated tracks, sunken sumps and others.
Apparently, the engineer Morán Moguel has managed to get resources assigned to him to remodel and in 2022 we will see the beginning of a surgery that will begin with Terminal 2, the one that has suffered the greatest damage for a series of reasons in its construction on inadequate land, in addition to the fact that in the 2017 earthquake it suffered damage and from then on it has been deteriorating even more.
As is known, Terminal 1 and other spaces will continue later to try to give passengers on the ground a little more slack. And although the Work Program of the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport (SICT) for 2022 contemplates the construction of a Terminal 3, the truth is that at the moment it is difficult to build it.
It is possible -and desirable- that they use spaces such as the presidential hangar that no longer has that use and other facilities that are abandoned, to put counters and provisional dispatch areas, in which the emergency of T2 is attended and after T1 .
And all this, of course, will not be achieved this year. The deterioration is much and the money is little. And although there is an intention to populate the AIFA with excess demand, it is very likely that competition will occur with already established airports, such as Guadalajara and Monterrey or even Panama, Dallas and others. Nothing easy for the challenge ahead.