Mexico City Texcoco Airport Aeropuerto de Texcoco, formerly Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de México (NAIM) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Aerial view of the proposed airport location, June 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Serves | Mexico City | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Zona Federal del Lago de Texcoco, municipalities of Ecatepec, Atenco and Texcoco, State of Mexico, Greater Mexico City | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 19°30′00″N 98°59′51″W / 19.5°N 98.9975°W | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mexico City Texcoco Airport was a planned airport in Mexico City that was meant to become Mexico's New International Airport (Spanish: Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de México—NAICM or NAIM). The project was announced in September 2014 but was canceled in late 2018 after a referendum was held stating that the new airport should be built at a different location due to how close it was to close housing, rising cost and a geographical issue with the site. Felipe Ángeles International Airport opened in March 2022.
Texcoco Airport was first announced by President Enrique Peña Nieto in his State of the Union Address on 2 September 2014. It was billed as Mexico's largest public infrastructure work in a century, and was set to replace Mexico City's current Benito Juárez International Airport.[1]
In October 2018, after construction had already begun, a non-binding referendum was organized by then President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in which almost 70 percent of the 1.067 million voters rejected the planned airport, choosing instead to build a new airport on the grounds of Santa Lucía Air Force Base.[2][3]
Construction continued for several weeks, but was suspended on 27 December 2018 after López Obrador took office.[4][5] In 2020, the government of Mexico announced that they would convert the 12,000-hectare (46 sq mi) space where the airport was being built into the Lake Texcoco Ecological Park, which will be a public space and an area of ecological restoration.
- ^ "Estadísticas del AICM (in Spanish)". Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México. 6 March 2014.
- ^ Redacción (2018-10-29). "Mayoría de votantes en consulta sobre nuevo aeropuerto en México rechaza su construcción" (in Spanish). BBC News Mundo. Retrieved February 14, 2020.
- ^ "Foster's $13 billion Mexico City airport nixed after public vote". Dezeen. 30 October 2018.
- ^ "Obra del NAIM sigue mientras gobierno negocia con acreedores". Animal Político. 3 December 2018.
- ^ Alberto Morales (3 January 2019). "Construcción de nuevo aeropuerto en Texcoco está oficialmente suspendida: Jiménez Espriú". El Universal (in Spanish).