Mexico: Airport unwilling to act on slots issue, says DOT

The United States’ Department of Transportation (DOT) has revealed that the Mexico City International Airport authorities appear to lack any plans that would allow them to improve their management of take-off and landing slots in their heavily congested airport.

The DOT has said that the AICM has failed to follow industry standards in their slot-assignment processes, which lack proper transparency and accountability. These remarks echo the findings of Mexican competition agency COFECE, which released its own in-depth investigation last February.

“The DOT has not been able to determine that the AICM has followed, or has committed to following, any of the guidelines for transparency in slot-assignment or for tackling the presence of barriers to entry (of new airlines)”.

The management of slots at Mexico City’s International Airport was one of the factors in the DOT’s decision to impose severe restrictions on the recent Delta/Aeroméxico alliance, limited to five years and forcing the airlines to give up 24 slot-pairs at the airport. “This was all confirmed and investigated by the DOT on their own, and I think it’s important that they have reached very similar conclusions to ours” said Carlos Mena Labarthe, head of COFECE’s research division, who worked closely with the US agency during its investigation.

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