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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Air traffic emergency nationwide in Mexico, not just in the capital

The head of Mexico’s air traffic controllers union identified several serious problems in the system, including outdated and improperly functioning equipment and a deficit of 300 controllers.

MEXICO CITY (CN) — The Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo International Airport on Mexico’s Pacific coast lacks the equipment necessary for effective communication between the tower and pilots, according to the head of Mexico’s air traffic controllers union Sinacta.

Basic instruments like light guns, barometers and anemometers, which measure wind speed and direction, are not functioning properly at the popular tourist destination’s airport, said Sinacta secretary general José Alfredo Covarrubias. 

“This should not be allowed. The basic equipment should at least be useful and working properly,” said Covarrubias, adding such problems affect airports nationwide. 

Mexico City became the focus of air navigation safety concerns over the weekend after an incident at the Benito Juárez International Airport Saturday night in which a plane almost landed on a runway occupied by another jetliner with clearance to take off.

However, Covarrubias said that safety concerns affect all of the 59 airports currently in operation in the country. In addition to problems with equipment, Mexico also has a worrying deficit of 300 air traffic controllers.

“There are airports with only three controllers and they each work three shifts straight,” he said. “They need their rest. Even if a controller feels good when they go into work, fatigue will eventually take effect, and it becomes dangerous.”

Air traffic controllers, pilots, specialists and concerned citizens have been reporting incidents similar to Saturday’s for more than a year, ever since Mexico’s air navigation service Seneam redesigned the country’s airspace in March 2021.

Sinacta has made at least 30 such incident reports in the last year, almost half of them in Mexico City. And while a lack of proper training has been cited as a cause of these incidents, Covarrubias said that this insufficient training pertains to the redesign of the airspace, not the controllers’ overall ability to do their jobs. 

Trainings for the redesign consisted of a few online tutorials and the new manuals do not use internationally recognized phraseology, which has caused communication problems between towers and pilots. 

But Covarrubias stressed the controllers themselves are not to blame for using the incorrect phraseology, as “they’re just using the language they were instructed to use. It’s a problem of the system, which is not doing things correctly.”

Neither is the air traffic control issue the only problem with Mexico’s aviation industry. In May 2021, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded the country to Category 2, its lowest rating. The FAA determined that Mexico’s government did not meet safety standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

That downgrade, however, was based on concerns within Mexico’s Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC), not the air traffic control issues within Seneam. 

Reuters reported in August 2021 that Mexico had hopes of regaining Category 1 status in the first half of 2022, but airport infrastructure specialist Fernando Gómez told Courthouse News that “the possibility appears far off.”

Recovering Category 1 could take another six months, as the Mexican government works to rectify the issues specific to that case, which concerned pilots and airlines, not air traffic controllers.

“Once they meet the ICAO requirements, we can say that we’ve returned to Category 1, but there’s still the question of air traffic control, which is another deal, another sector of the aviation industry,” said Gómez. 

The FAA told Courthouse News that with a technical assistance agreement signed on July 23, 2021, “AFAC and the FAA commit to work together to improve Mexico’s aviation safety oversight system to level meeting standards established by [ICAO],” and that the two signatories to the agreement continue to meet regularly in Mexico City.

In his morning press conference Tuesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “categorically” denied that the problem lies with the redesign of Mexico's airspace, repeating accusations from the day before that such claims come from “our adversaries and the conservative press.”

López Obrador’s press office did not respond to a request for comment. 

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