Tulum airport shed 233,900 passengers in six months, with international traffic down 41 percent

Tulum International Airport handled 471,500 passengers between January and June, 233,900 fewer than in the same stretch of 2025, according to the federal civil aviation agency's operating statistics.

The Tulum Times reported a 34 percent slide in international traffic in late May, working from data that stopped in April. Two more months of numbers have not softened that picture.

The terminal opened in December 2023 and closed 2025 slightly ahead of 2024. The first half of 2026 undoes that. A third of the traffic is gone, and almost three-quarters of the loss sits in international flying, the segment that carried most of the airport's operations from the day it opened.

June cut Tulum airport passenger traffic nearly in half

June is the last month the AFAC has published, and it is the worst reading in the set. The terminal moved 47,600 passengers against 86,200 a year earlier, a drop of 44.8 percent.

International flying did the damage. It fell from 42,000 travelers to 15,500, down 63.2 percent, more than 20 points steeper than the semester's own average of 40.8 percent. The slide did not level off as the year went on. It picked up speed.

Domestic traffic held, barely

Mexican routes lost 63,400 passengers over the six months, closing at 224,400 against 287,800 in 2025, a fall of 22 percent. June was harder, with 32,100 domestic travelers against 44,200, roughly 27 percent down.

That gentler slide changed the shape of the airport. In the first half of 2025, international flying accounted for 59 percent of everyone who passed through Tulum. This year it is 52 percent. In June, the ratio flipped outright, with more than two domestic passengers for every international one, in a terminal built around foreign arrivals.

Against the airport's own history, the semester reads worse still. Tulum needed all of 2024 to reach 1,233,459 passengers and finished 2025 marginally above that. Six months into 2026, it has logged 471,500. The rest of the year would have to outperform the first half by a wide margin for either line to hold.

Avianca, Copa, JetBlue and Volaris stopped flying to Tulum

The passenger numbers follow the schedule. Avianca dropped Bogota. Copa suspended Panama City over aircraft delays. JetBlue pulled its New York service back to a seasonal slot, and Volaris ended its Costa Rica connection. American Airlines had already closed Charlotte in February 2025, and United suspended Los Angeles, Chicago and Newark across that year. Air Canada cut its seasonal Ottawa and Quebec City service while keeping Toronto and Montreal.

By May, public schedule counts put Tulum at four international destinations, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Miami, down from 12 in 2024. Daily international departures had gone from roughly 10 to three.

Sargassum, security and the drive from the terminal

No carrier has published a full accounting of why it left. Reporting in La Jornada Maya and Noticaribe in May pointed to four pressures working together: security incidents in the municipality, three consecutive sargassum seasons on the coast, an oversupply of hotel rooms that pushed rates down, and the cost of ground transport between the airport and the hotel zone, which for many travelers still compares badly with flying into Cancun.

None of those are new. What changed in the first half of 2026 is that airlines stopped waiting them out.

The terminal is run by Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos Olmeca-Maya-Mexica, the state company created to operate the federal government's southeast transport assets.

Eight extra frequencies from the capital, for July and August

State and federal officials moved on the domestic side first. On July 10, Governor Mara Lezama announced eight additional Mexicana de Aviación frequencies into Tulum for the summer, aimed at the Mexico City metropolitan area, the State of Mexico and Hidalgo.

Those flights fall outside the period the AFAC data covers, and they run only through August. They also leave the actual hole untouched. The domestic market was never where the airport lost its volume.

Air Canada returns to Toronto on October 25

The international answer came on August 2, when Tulum tourism director Haydee Hernández Pastrana announced eight international routes returning for the winter season.

Air Canada resumes service to Toronto on October 25 and to Montreal on October 29, both running through March 2027. Air Transat brings back Montreal and Quebec City on October 25, on the same calendar. WestJet adds four seasonal frequencies from Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. United returns to Newark for a narrower window, December 17 to January 24.

That is a winter schedule, not a recovery. It restores service for the months when the Caribbean sells itself, and it says nothing about April, May and June, the stretch where this year's numbers came apart.

The AFAC publishes July next. Those figures will carry Mexicana's summer additions and little else. The real test lands on October 25, when Air Canada's Toronto flight is scheduled to touch down at a terminal that has spent six months emptying out.

Would eight returning winter routes be enough to bring Tulum airport back to where it started? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.