Ricardo Dueñas, general director of Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte (OMA), announced that one of his plans is to position the Monterrey airport as a ‘hub’, due to the saturation registered by the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) .
“The government has been very clear in seeking a traffic decentralization process and that is where we want to be part of the solution, that is why we are investing in the terminals and we want to make Monterrey, if not the country’s main hub, one of the main ones,” he said.
In a conference, on the occasion of the issuance last March of its first bond linked to sustainability for 4,000 million pesos, he commented that the Monterrey airport has a geographical advantage due to its proximity to the United States.
He assured that “that’s where our investment plan and expectations go.”
In fact, he said that as part of his investment plan towards 2025, this year the first phase of the expansion of the Monterrey airport will be completed, which includes the extension of the ambulatory area of Terminal A and a wing focused on airline lines. low cost.
He explained that during the pandemic, low-cost airlines became more relevant and grew significantly. Today two thirds of the country’s air traffic is operated by these airlines.
The general director of OMA estimated that this year they will be able to recover the passenger traffic that contracted in 2020, as a result of the health contingency due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We are seeing a fairly important recovery, we were already coming all last year with a sustainable increase. In January and February the Omicron issue returned, but what we are seeing for March and April is that we are already reaching the levels we had pre-pandemic. We believe that we are going to close the year very close to or already at the levels we had pre-pandemic,” he said.
Ricardo Dueñas explained that its recovery has been slower compared to Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP) and Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR), because business traffic is the most important in OMA’s operations and it is the one that has slow to recover, although he reiterated his optimism, reaffirming that this 2022 will be one of recovery.
Unaffected…so far
Regarding the increase in the price of fuel, which has been around 40% this year, the manager assured that until now there has been no impact or reduction in passenger traffic.
Although he said that since fuel is one of the most important inputs for airlines, since it represents 30 and 35% of their expenses, there could be an increase in the price of tickets.
On March 29, OMA placed a bond linked to sustainability for 4,000 million pesos that it will use to pay short-term bank debt and to fund its Master Development Program 2021-2025.
Another part of the resources will be used by the airport group for actions aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions per passenger by 58% by 2025.