What happened to Tulum airport?

Volaris confirmed this week that it will suspend all flights to Tulum airport from January 7. Aeroméxico had already flown its last flight from the same terminal on September 30.

The building moved 471,500 passengers between January and June, 33.2 percent fewer than the 705,400 it handled in the same months of 2025, according to the Federal Civil Aviation Agency. International traffic fell harder, down 40.8 percent to 247,100 travelers.

The pattern now runs in one direction. A private airline can price a route, watch the load factor, and leave when the math stops working. The company that operates Tulum airport belongs to a military business group whose tourism units have reported losses in almost every publicly available account, and it cannot make the same decision.

Volaris points at the TUA, the fuel, and SENEAM

Volaris framed the move as a temporary suspension after a review of route profitability. The airline said it had to pause the flights with the lowest load factors, Tulum among them, and set out the cost side as a higher airport use fee, known in Mexico as the TUA, more expensive jet fuel, the air navigation charges billed by SENEAM, and the increase planned for the non-resident fee in 2027. Sales for travel after January 7 stop this weekend. Passengers already booked beyond that date are offered rebooking, an electronic voucher or a refund.

Aeroméxico was shorter about it. The carrier announced on September 27 that September 30 would be its final day in Tulum, described the pause as a response to market conditions and a way to maximize its route network, and gave no return date. It had opened the station on December 1, 2023, with fourteen weekly frequencies from Mexico City. By May of this year, only four weekly flights remained, all of them from Felipe Ángeles.

A terminal built for 5.5 million moved 471,500

Monthly figures show how fast the slide ran. Tulum handled 107,751 air passengers in January and 47,353 in June. International traffic in June alone fell 63.2 percent compared with the same month in 2025, a collapse in the foreign segment that we tracked through the first half of the year in our earlier report on the decline.

The terminal was designed for 5.5 million passengers a year. It opened in December 2023 and closed in 2025 with 1,248,645, roughly a quarter of its capacity in the best full year it has had.

GAFSACOMM runs Tulum airport, the parks, and the fuel terminals

The airport sits inside Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos Olmeca-Maya-Mexica, the holding company owned by the armed forces and known as GAFSACOMM. The same structure administers hotels, parks, fuel terminals, and Mexicana de Aviación. One organization answers for businesses that run on very different commercial logic.

The results are public. Mexicana earned 462 million pesos in 2025, while operating costs exceeded 1,403 million, resulting in an operating loss of 941 million pesos, about 2.5 million pesos a day, according to financial statements reviewed by El Financiero. The airline added another 513 million in operating losses during the first half of 2026.

The railway is heavier. Tren Maya posted an operating loss of 3,649 million pesos in 2025, according to the same statements, and El Universal reported 5,013 million for the first half of 2026 alone. From its inauguration to June of this year, the project incurred 14,104 million pesos in expenses and losses, against 1,060 million pesos earned from ticket sales and services.

The hotel line reads the same way. Grupo Mundo Maya, which operates seven hotels along the Tren Maya corridor, reported losses of 2,819.7 million pesos in 2025.

Tulum holds its own piece of that portfolio. GAFSACOMM formally took over the management, operation and maintenance of Parque del Jaguar in December 2024. This year the federal government announced Plan Tulum Renace, which made entry to the park free and cut fees at the archaeological zone and the protected natural area, a reversal this newspaper covered when free entry reached foreign residents.

AIFA is the exception

The honest objection to all of this is that military management is not the only variable at work, and in one case it is not even a losing one. AIFA, built and operated by Sedena, appears in next year's projections as the exception, with revenue of 2,256 million pesos forecast for 2027.

Tulum's slide also has causes that sit outside any operator's control. Visits to the archaeological zone fell about 33.1 percent in the first quarter, from 385,879 to 257,978. Sargassum kept arriving. El Economista reported that hotels in town and on the coast were running at 15 to 20 percent occupancy in June, with several deciding to open only during the months of highest demand.

Cancún has something Tulum cannot manufacture quickly. ASUR has spent decades assembling an ecosystem of airlines, ground transport, fuel supply and airport services around a terminal with enough volume to spread fixed costs across millions of seats. The detailed fee comparisons between the two airports now circulating with this story, in an analysis published by Tribuna de México, are not independently corroborated in the public sources available, and this newspaper does not present them as verified.

The 2027 budget already books a loss

Hacienda's spending proposal for next year contains its own answer. An El Financiero analysis of the projections in the 2027 budget bill found that the state companies run by Defense and the Navy, covering airports, trains, parks, hotels, airlines, service stations and museums, would lose 2,422 million pesos over the year, about 6.6 million a day. Grupo Mundo Maya leads that list with an estimated 1,339 million. Mexicana's own revenue line falls to 124 million pesos for 2027, against the 1,591 million budgeted for 2026.

Volaris will continue flying the route until January 7 and will stop selling seats beyond that date this weekend. After that date, scheduled domestic service at Tulum airport is operated by Mexicana de Aviación and Viva Aerobus, and one of those two belongs to the same armed forces that operate the runway. The first high season measured without Aeroméxico begins in December.

Does Tulum airport need a civilian operator, or is the traffic problem bigger than whoever runs the terminal? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.