Tulum pays the image bill for an airport in another municipality

Tulum councilman Eugenio Barbachano has asked that the town's name be removed from the airport that serves it, a terminal built on ejido land in the neighboring municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

Barbachano is Tulum's fifth regidor and a former municipal tourism director, and he laid out the proposal in remarks El Universal published on October 15. Latinus reported the replacement he has in mind, a name that hands the terminal entirely to the municipality holding the land, Aeropuerto Municipal Felipe Carrillo Puerto de Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

The proposal lands in a hard month for the route map. Aeroméxico suspended its Tulum flights on September 30, Volaris stops serving the airport on January 7, and American Airlines drops Miami on January 5. The name on the ticket, through all of it, stays Tulum's.

'A fraud on the tourist,' the councilman told El Universal

Speaking in Spanish, Barbachano said the terminal is neither international, nor in Tulum, nor in the Riviera Maya, but in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Then came the line that traveled.

"Calling it Tulum International Airport is a fraud on the tourist," he said, adding that the label strikes the destination's reputation directly.

His case runs through the arrival. A traveler who buys a ticket to Tulum, he told the paper, lands more than 30 kilometers away in jungle that belongs to another municipality, without accessible ground transport and without a guaranteed flight home as carriers leave one by one. If the terminal is in Carrillo Puerto, he argued, it should be named Carrillo Puerto, and Carrillo Puerto should carry out its operations.

One detail is worth clearing up for readers who follow the Spanish coverage. El Universal's text gave the councilman's first name as Fernando, and several outlets repeated it. The newspaper's own photo caption, the cabildo record of his appointment, and the PAN's presentation of him as a new affiliate in August all identify Tulum's fifth regidor as Eugenio Barbachano.

Where the Tulum airport name actually comes from

Half of what he wants removed was never in the official name. López Obrador proposed Felipe Carrillo Puerto at a March 2022 press conference, noting that the runway was going up on ejido land inside that municipality, and the terminal opened on December 1, 2023 under exactly that name. This publication covered the Chunyaxché ejido land while the project was still under construction.

Tulum arrived through the market. Airlines sell the destination, booking systems list TQO under Tulum, and official communications routinely stretch the name to Aeropuerto Internacional de Tulum Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Grupo Mundo Maya, the state company that runs the terminal and was known as GAFSACOMM until May 2025, promotes it in the same way.

So the councilman is asking a federal operator, over which his cabildo holds no authority, to surrender the most valuable asset in its inventory. Nothing formal has been filed, by him or by anyone else.

International operations fell from 301 to 109 in one year

The federal civil aviation agency, AFAC, recorded 301 international operations at the airport in August 2025 and 109 in August 2026, a 63.8 percent decline. International passengers dropped 76.4 percent over the same comparison.

The terminal's own figures carry the slide into autumn, with 4,026 international passengers in September, down from 7,572 in August.

Those numbers measure a contraction without naming its cause. El Financiero has reported that the airport administration withdrew the incentives carriers are usually given at a new terminal, and the federal government has instead pointed to jet fuel prices and the low season.

Aeroméxico out, Volaris next

Three carriers have moved inside a single season, and not in the same direction. Aeroméxico presented its September 30 suspension as temporary and tied to its own network. Volaris goes further, ending its Tulum routes on January 7, 2027. American keeps Dallas-Fort Worth, the route that opened the airport's international era in March 2024, and gives up Miami two days before Volaris leaves.

Domestic service holds. Mexicana and Viva Aerobus both fly in from Felipe Ángeles International.

The terminal has an ADO counter and a train platform beside it

The transport half of Barbachano's case is the part the record can check, and it comes out mixed rather than empty.

Tulum town sits roughly half an hour north on Federal Highway 307. ADO sells seats at a module in arrivals and priced its airport coach at 175 pesos when the route opened in January 2024. The Tren Maya has its own platform, Tulum Aeropuerto, next to the terminal building, with a second station in town at Parque del Jaguar.

What the airport lacks is frequency. The coach runs a handful of times a day against a flight schedule it was never matched to, the train timetable was built for intercity travel rather than for arrivals, colectivos do not serve airports, and a passenger landing late is left negotiating with a driver who has no meter and no published tariff.

That is a real problem. It is also a different one from the name.

Three Canadian carriers come back on October 24

Capacity is moving the other way this month. Grupo Mundo Maya said in early October that Air Canada, WestJet, and Air Transat will resume Tulum operations from October 24 for the winter season, a date other accounts of the same briefing put at October 25. The operator projects international operations by Delta, United, and American rising from 552 to 1,064 between November and March, and President Claudia Sheinbaum, asked about the airport at her October 8 press conference, put the increase in international operations for the coming season at 93 percent.

The federal tourism ministry has announced seasonal connections to Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Quebec, as well as Newark, operated by four airlines. The Quintana Roo government counts 24 additional Mexicana flights for December and part of January.

For now, the proposal is a statement rather than a filing. The cabildo has not voted on it, no federal step to rename the terminal has been reported, and the next fixed date on the airport's calendar is reserved for the airlines. In the last week of October, the first Canadian flights of the winter land at a terminal that will still say Tulum on the ticket.

Should a terminal in Felipe Carrillo Puerto keep selling itself as Tulum's airport, or has the name stopped matching the trip? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.