Mexico’s Not-So-Friendly Skies: A close call between two Airbus A-320s is only the latest near miss for air travelers

Employees work at the new Felipe Angeles International Airport near Mexico City, January 31.

The Wall Street Journal 

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

May 15, 2022 3:57 pm ET

A near-collision of two jets in Mexico City was captured on video May 7, stunning the nation. One plane was about to land, the other cleared for takeoff on the same runway at Benito Juárez International Airport; both flights were operated by the discount airline Volaris. Within two days, Víctor Manuel Hernández Sandoval, director of navigation services for Mexican Air Space—the country’s air-traffic control authority—had resigned.

Confidence in Mexican air safety remains shaken, because the circumstances that led to the close call run deeper than the competency of one man. The near-disaster has reignited a public debate about whether changes to the funding and infrastructure of Mexico’s air-transportation network, executed under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have made Mexico’s airspace dangerous.

Mr. López Obrador calls charges that he has increased air-travel risks a conspiracy by his political opponents. If that’s true, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the United Nations are in on it. A year ago the FAA downgraded Mexico’s aviation safety rating to Category 2, which according to the administration “means that the country’s laws or regulations lack the necessary requirements to oversee the country’s air carriers in accordance with minimum international safety standards, or the civil aviation authority is lacking in one or more areas,” like technical expertise, training, data collection, inspections and safety concerns. The U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization sets those standards.

This happened before, in 2010, but Mexico recovered the higher rating in about four months. In July 2021 the government said that restoring its Category 1 rating was a priority. But on May 7, nearly a year after the 2021 downgrade, a fatal collision involving two Airbus A320s was averted only because a skillful pilot pulled up in time to avoid slamming into the other plane. The aviation community is warning that Mexican airspace is an accident waiting to happen.

Last week the head of Mexico’s air-traffic controllers union, José Alfredo Covarrubias, blasted the government for failing to provide funding for properly functioning equipment and for a deficit of 300 controllers, which, he said, leaves those on the frontlines overworked. This problem isn’t unique to Mexico City, he said, but includes tourist destinations around the country. According to a report in the newspaper El Universal, which interviewed Mr. Covarrubias, the union says there have been 30 serious air incidents nationwide since December. It blames this heightened vulnerability on “the redesign of the airspace and current working conditions,” El Universal wrote.

That redesign was launched by the López Obrador administration in April 2021. The International Air Transport Association has said that since then there have been 17 “ground proximity warning system alerts” at Benito Juárez alone. The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations has complained that air-traffic control isn’t trained in the redesign.

This didn’t need to happen. To create higher capacity for Mexico City, the Virginia-based consulting firm Mitre helped the government identify the dry lake basin of Texcoco to build a replacement for the traffic-saturated Benito Juárez airport. Aviation analysts said Texcoco offered the best conditions in difficult terrain—high mountains on three sides of a valley—for approaches and for landing a jet safely.

The $13 billion project—the New International Mexico Airport—was almost 40% complete when Mr. López Obrador took office in December 2018. He argued that the state-of-the-art facility serving one of Latin America’s largest metropolises was an extravagance for the rich. He killed it. To add capacity to Benito Juárez, he assigned the construction of new runways at the Santa Lucia military base.

The Santa Lucia facility, named Felipe Ángeles International Airport, opened in March. It handles an average of 12 departures and arrivals daily. There is only one international flight, with service to and from Caracas, Venezuela. Benito Juárez, a connections hub closer to the urban center, has nearly 900 daily flights.

Mr. López Obrador will now force traffic to his pet project by reducing flights at Benito Juárez and assigning any new routes to Felipe Ángeles. The flying public will be worse off—and not only because of more-expensive ground transportation and fewer connections.

Pilots landing at the busy Benito Júarez have to skirt the other airport. This requires that they begin their approaches at higher altitudes and closer to the mountains where the air is unstable, then descend steeply. On May 4 the international pilots association cited several incidents of “low fuel states due to unplanned holding, diversions for excessive delays, and significant GPWS [ground proximity warning system] alerts where one crew almost had a controlled flight into terrain.”

That’s pilot-speak for a crash. It’s a risk generated not by aviation but by Mr. López Obrador’s political agenda.

https://www.wsj.com