Mexicana de Aviación added 18 monthly Tulum flights since January

Aeroméxico flew its last Tulum service on September 30, and Volaris stops on January 7, the sharpest of this year's Tulum airport flight cuts. The one carrier adding flights is state-owned Mexicana.

Both exits land on a schedule that was already thinning. Monthly flight counts from the Federal Civil Aviation Agency, known in Mexico as AFAC, published this week by the business outlet Expansión, run from January through August, the last month on record. Most private routes shrink across those eight months. The two routes flown by Mexicana de Aviación are holding or growing.

That split matters to anyone booking a flight into Tulum this winter. An airport in its third year normally adds routes as carriers test the market, and the figures so far suggest this one is doing the reverse. What growth exists on the domestic board belongs to the airline the federal government runs.

Guadalajara lost 16 monthly flights while Hermosillo went from zero to 29

Guadalajara to Tulum carried 52 flights in January and 36 in August. Monterrey went from 19 to 14 across the same months. The Mexico City connection out of Benito Juárez stayed near 31 flights a month all year, the steadiest line in the table.

Mexicana's two routes read differently. Felipe Ángeles to Tulum moved between 82 and 112 flights a month and finished August at 101, the busiest connection the airport has. Hermosillo recorded no flights at all in January or February, opened in March with four, and reached 29 in August.

Added together, those two routes went from 112 flights in January to 130 in August. Every other domestic line in the AFAC table lost ground or stood still.

Aeroméxico left on September 30; Volaris leaves on January 7

Aeroméxico announced the suspension on September 27 and operated its final flight to Tulum three days later. The airline told Expansión the move was in response to market conditions and to maximize its route network, and said it would keep monitoring demand before deciding whether to return.

Shortly before confirming the closure, it announced two new Mexico City routes, to Nassau and to Montego Bay, both starting ahead of Easter 2027.

Volaris followed within days. Its suspension takes effect on January 7, 2027, covers every flight to and from the airport, and includes a list of costs attached: the non-resident fee, which rises by 35 percent next year, the airport use charge, fuel, and air navigation services. The airline said it had reviewed the profitability of its network and suspended the services with the weakest load factors. Tickets for travel after that date come off sale this weekend.

Fernando Gómez Suárez points to subsidies behind Mexicana's two routes

Aviation analyst Fernando Gómez Suárez reads Mexicana's presence as a function of its finances rather than its commercial position. He told Expansión that Mexicana will end up as the only airline flying there, and that it flies because it holds state financing, not because the company is strong. That is his assessment. Mexicana has published no route-level results for Tulum, and the airline has not responded publicly to the characterization.

Houston, Atlanta and Miami each lost most of their Tulum flights

International frequencies fell more sharply than domestic ones, by as much as 70 percent over the year, according to the AFAC figures. Atlanta went from 30 flights in January to five in August. Houston dropped from 33 to 10. Miami stayed above 20 a month until July, then recorded three. Dallas-Fort Worth is the outlier, moving from 25 to 23.

Two routes stopped outright. Newark logged five flights in January and nothing after. New York ran 11 in March and disappeared from the table in April.

The retreat predates this year. Avianca ended its Bogotá service in the first days of July 2025. Copa Airlines, JetBlue and Volaris Costa Rica had already suspended their itineraries, leaving four international destinations against the twelve the airport reached in mid 2024. International traffic in the first quarter totaled 178,000 passengers, down 34 percent from the same period in 2025.

Tulum airport flight cuts meet a winter schedule that starts October 25

The Canadian columns in the table end in April, and that is the part of the data that argues against reading every blank cell as a loss. Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Quebec City are winter services. They stopped on schedule, and they are booked to return.

Mexico's tourism ministry announced five seasonal routes for the 2026 to 2027 season:

• Air Canada, Toronto, one Sunday flight a week from October 25 to April 11.
• WestJet, Toronto, two weekly flights from October 31 to April 24.
• WestJet, Calgary, two weekly flights from October 29.
• Air Transat, Montreal and Quebec City.
• United, Newark, from December 17 to January 24.

The ceiling is low. Mexico News Daily counted seven services among those four airlines, worth up to 10 weekly flights, at a terminal that carried more than 1.2 million passengers in 2025 and that industry estimates now place near 700,000 for 2026.

The speculation arrived before the passengers did

Rosario Avilés, an analyst of the same sector, traces the problem to oversupply and speculation around Tulum that never turned into the demand the projections assumed. Her proposed fix is slow and collective. She describes agreements among hotel owners, restaurant operators, airlines, and municipalities, and what the industry calls "warming a route," backing it until it fills.

Underneath sits the destination's own cost structure. Expansión's reporting on Tulum points to rents, services and food prices that climbed faster than the experience improved, and to hotel occupancy that has not returned to its post-pandemic level.

Quintana Roo tourism secretary Bernardo Cueto Riestra said in July that the route losses reflected global conditions across the airline industry, and that the state was working with the federal government and the airport group on incentives to pull carriers back by the end of the year. Two airlines have announced departures since he said it.

Volaris pulls its Tulum tickets off sale this weekend for travel after January 7. Air Canada's first Toronto flight of the season lands on October 25, and WestJet's last one leaves on April 24. That window is the entire international case for the airport next year.

Have you flown into Tulum airport this year, and does the loss of Aeroméxico and Volaris change how you plan to get here? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.