With the start of operations of the second runway, the Guadalajara International Airport is consolidated as the most important airport logistics hub for cargo transportation in the country, as well as the third most important in Mexico in number of passengers.
Currently, the Guadalajara International Airport is the third most important in Mexico only after the Mexico City International Airport and the Cancun International Airport. In addition, it is the second busiest by air cargo flights.
It has an average of 1,079 weekly departure frequencies, 10 airlines operate connecting with 60 destinations, of which 32 are domestic routes and 28 are international. During 2023, it received almost 18 million passengers.
With the second runway, it will go from the 41 operations currently carried out per hour to 60 operations per hour.
The director of the Pacific Airport Group (GAP), Raúl Revuelta Musalem, explained that with the new infrastructure in the long term “it will allow us to attract more flights, we will be able to continue giving slots and continue growing.”
He assured that “in the short term, having a second runway allows maintenance work to be done without closing the airport; so, the immediate thing is that the airport operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all the time.”
He stressed that with the new infrastructure, the Guadalajara terminal will have greater capacity to grow its operations.
“The non-simultaneous operations on parallel islands only make you a little less efficient, but with two segregated runways, the Mexico City International Airport had 56 million passengers, we had 18 million passengers and we have a long way to go for the second runway to serve us.”
Investment and infrastructure
The second runway of the Guadalajara International Airport was inaugurated last July with an investment of more than three thousand 500 million pesos.
According to GAP, the new infrastructure will allow it to increase the landing and takeoff capacity by up to 70%; now, Jalisco has the fifth terminal in the country with two runways.
The new runway is 3,538 meters long and 45 meters wide, and has a new taxiway that will allow the separation of arrival and departure operations. The runway is considered a segregated operation, that is, operations will be separated between the two runways, one for arrivals and one for departures.
Air routes increase
In this six-year period, the Guadalajara airport has incorporated new routes, both national and international.
According to Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, the Guadalajara terminal currently has an average of 1,079 weekly departure frequencies, 10 airlines operate that connect with 60 destinations, of which 32 are national routes and 28 are international.
Canada Flair Airlines, the main low-cost airline in the neighboring country, recently began operations on the Guadalajara-Vancouver route, which will have two weekly connections: on Mondays and Fridays. The new route will be added to the Guadalajara-Toronto route, which begins operations next September.
A study carried out by the Institute of Statistical and Geographic Information (IIEG) of Jalisco indicates that the Guadalajara terminal expanded its flights to the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), Tapachula, Puerto Escondido, Chetumal, Tulum and Loreto.
On the international level, Guadalajara connected with Charlotte, McAllen, Madrid, Frankfurt, Doha, Jebel Ali and Dubai, in addition to Vancouver and Toronto.
“In terms of flights and passengers, there have been positive variations during the six-year term,” said Mireya Pasillas, director of the IIEG Economic-Financial Statistical Information Unit.
He explained that in the case of domestic flights, during the current six-year period they grew by 37% compared to the previous one.
As for international flights, the increase was 7.13 percent. Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and San Francisco are the ones that grew the most.
For his part, Gustavo Staufert, director of the Guadalajara Convention and Visitors Bureau, highlighted the importance of the growth of air connections.
She said that as Guadalajara has a dynamic of expansion, so does its airport, which has experienced significant improvements in both facilities and capacity to accommodate the growing influx of passengers.
In this regard, the Secretary of Tourism of Jalisco, Vanessa Pérez Lamas, highlighted the importance of air connectivity for the tourism industry, since through its two airports, Jalisco has more national routes and connections with more destinations around the world.
“The new routes offer a great opportunity, considering that Canada is the second most important foreign tourism market for our State, after the United States. There is considerable potential to increase our presence in this market. With these flights, we can develop itineraries that include Vallarta and prolong the stay of visitors,” highlighted the state government official.
They mobilize millions of passengers
So far this year, passenger traffic at the Guadalajara International Airport registered a slight decrease.
According to GAP data, from January to July of this year, a total of 10 million 172 thousand passengers were transported at the Guadalajara terminal, a smaller number compared to the 10 million 284 passengers transported in the same period in 2023, that is, a decrease of 1.1 percent.
Last July, one million 645 thousand passengers were transported, a number very similar to the one million 644 thousand passengers transported in the same month in 2023.
The director of the Pacific Airport Group, Raúl Revuelta, explained that the drop in passenger traffic is due to the fact that there are fewer seats offered by the airlines.
The airlines are carrying out preventive reviews of the Pratt & Whitney engines of the A320neo and A321neo families, which is why many of their equipment stopped flying.
“Basically we have the effect of the engines that we have had for almost a year and that operate Airbus 320 and 321, both Viva Aerobus and Volaris, so today there is a decrease in capacity in the country in the number of planes and number of seats that are being offered and it is clearly having an impact on the number of passengers, we have a slight decrease,” he commented.
He clarified that the good news is that the decrease in passenger traffic is occurring due to a temporary decrease in seats and as soon as the airlines normalize their fleet and put it to fly at 100% the numbers will recover.
“It is not a decrease in demand, demand is what scares us all because it means an economic crisis, but that is not the case,” he added.
Raúl Revuelta highlighted the different markets that the Guadalajara airport serves, such as passengers traveling for business, tourism and family visits.
The director was confident that by the end of the year there will be a recovery in passenger traffic and around 19 million passengers could be mobilized, a greater number than the almost 18 million passengers mobilized last year.
“What Guadalajara has that is very different from any other airport in the country is a mix of different passenger niches and it is interesting because they give you different moments of economic growth,” he concluded.
A hotel, a shopping center and more…
Investments in the Guadalajara International Airport will not stop and in the next five years they will be greater than what was invested in the last five years, from 2020 to 2024.
Raúl Revuelta Musalem, director of the Pacific Airport Group (GAP), assured that investments from 2025 to 2029 in the Guadalajara terminal will be mainly destined to the purchase of land. “We are buying land in the entire area to be able to meet the needs, even up to a third runway,” he explained.
During the 2020-2024 five-year period, Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP) made investments of 15.9 billion pesos in this airport. This investment included the construction of the second runway, the modernization of Terminal 1, including the façade, a pedestrian bridge, a covered outdoor walkway and roads, intervening approximately 26,400 square meters.
Also, in the General Aviation area, a new platform of 126,090 square meters was built, with 83 positions for airplanes, four for helicopters, 45 hangars and new facilities for government authorities.
The mixed-use building was also inaugurated, which includes a Hilton Garden Inn Hotel, already in operation, with 180 rooms, two office buildings, a two-level shopping plaza and a bus parking lot. In addition, 11,704 square meters of the current terminal building were expanded and 1,188 square meters of it were renovated.
Regarding parking, four thousand parking spaces were made available to passengers, increasing the previous capacity by 90%, and a future capacity of more than 10,000 spaces is projected. These works are expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Source: informador