Aeroméxico planes at Mexico City airport.HENRY ROMERO
Mexico has failed the US Federal Aviation Administration exam. The FAA, for its acronym in English, has announced this Tuesday that the Mexican government does not comply with international standards for aviation safety and that, consequently, it becomes one of only eight countries in the world with category 2. The downgrade does not prevent Mexican airlines from maintaining existing flights, but it does slow the launch of new routes to the northern country and the ability of their US partners to market codeshare tickets, a blow to a sector that was just recovering from the drop in income due to the pandemic.
The evaluation, which has been extended from October of last year to February, has identified "several areas of non-compliance with the minimum standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, in its acronym in English", reads the statement, which does not details which areas are involved. The loss of category 1 means that the Mexican Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC) "lacks the necessary requirements" to adequately supervise or that it is deficient in one or more aspects, including technical knowledge. , qualified personnel, record keeping, and inspection procedures Besides Mexico, only Venezuela, Curaçao, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan, Ghana and a group of small Caribbean islands carry category 2.
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Despite the blow to the credibility of the Mexican air authorities, the FAA says it is “fully committed” to helping them “improve their safety oversight system” through support and experts. "Sustained progress can help the AFAC to regain category 1," the statement said, without specifying the timing of that possible reevaluation. Until then, however, the agency will increase its scrutiny of Mexican airline flights to the United States. Mexico already lost category 1 in 2010, when the United States detected a shortage of air inspectors, and it took four months to recover it.
Before the announcement, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had tried to downplay the downgrade. "It is not a delicate issue, I see more a purpose to help the US lines with a measure of this type, at the end of the day there will be no shortage of airplanes because air transport is growing a lot and the economy is recovering", declared the Monday at a press conference.
The two main airlines in the country, Aeroméxico and Volaris, have issued statements in which they affirm that their current routes to the US are insured. However, Volaris, the one that transports the most passengers, has acknowledged that it will have to redirect its expansion plans to the domestic market, as well as to the rest of Latin America, until category 1 is recovered. codeshare with the American Frontier, has ensured that "it represents only 0.4% of the occupancy rate of our flights." Aeromexico, for its part, has had a strategic alliance with Delta for four years.
Along the same lines, the Aviators 'Union Association (ASPA), the main union in the sector, has wanted to unlink the US decision from the quality of the airlines' service. "The degradation is for the country and for the aeronautical authority, not for airlines or industry participants," the statement said. "The three companies with whom ASPA has collective bargaining comply with the requested standards."
The FAA's decision grabs the sector at a delicate moment, in full recovery after the hit of the pandemic. "The outlook had been quite good, but this does put a pause in international traffic, to the United States, which is the main catalyst for tourism in the country," says analyst Brian Rodríguez, from the Monex Group. “The second quarter was going to boost traffic because there were fewer restrictions to travel to the United States and Canada. The demand for flights may be being satisfied with the North American supply ”.
In 2020, Mexico suffered a 46% drop in international arrivals.
Although Volaris has emerged relatively irate from the pothole and has announced new routes and an expansion of the fleet, its biggest competitor, Aeroméxico, is immersed in a financial restructuring after submitting in early July to the bankruptcy law of the United States.
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