Tulum’s “Airport City” will serve commercial flights, business aviation and military base

The next “airport city” of the upcoming Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport in Tulum will have the capacity to handle commercial flights and executive aviation, in addition to having a military base for the security of the region. This was announced by Commander Gustavo Vallejo, head of the Felipe Ángeles Corps of Engineers.

During President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) morning conference, Commander Vallejo explained that the Tulum airport will have “the capacity to attend an initial demand of 5.5 million passengers in its first phase of development, of which it is estimated that 75 percent of them will be foreign passengers”.

This is due to the fact that it will have “a platform for 13 commercial aircraft positions, both for domestic and international flights, and an additional platform for general aviation and executive aviation, which will have 28 positions. In addition, there will be a hangar with another 12 positions or spaces for executive aircraft.

Next to the control tower, fuel tower and airport services area, a fixed operations base called FBO will be built “which is responsible for attending to executive aviation, which will enhance this type of aviation in the Riviera Maya, given that Cancun’s airport already restricts this type of operations and operations are already underway”.

Extending the airport services that the Tulum facilities will offer, “a multipurpose military air base is contemplated to strengthen the security and surveillance of the national air space, assist the population in case of disasters and attend forest fires”. The airport will be operated by the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (Sedena).

“The Tulum Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport is a fundamental project, as we have mentioned, for the economic development of the region and is integrated to the highway system and the railroad,” said the head of the Felipe Ángeles Engineering Corps of the National Defense Secretariat (Sedena).

As it is contemplated in the construction of the Mayan Train, it will be connected to its own station within the terminal. In addition, “it will have, due to its connection to the highway, a commercial corridor of 10.5 kilometers that interconnects with federal highway 307 to develop an airport city and facilitate the urban reorganization of the Tulum area”.

Vallejo highlighted that “its infrastructure and operational potential classify it within the airports with a 4-Eco category, that is to say, it can operate all the aircrafts that arrive and depart from our country”. He gave as an example that, due to the quality of its construction, the runway will be of the highest quality and best performance on the peninsula.