Tulum, Q.R. — Advancements are being made on the starting of construction for the new Tulum International Airport. Engineers from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) have been at the Ejido Sunyaxchén site for nearly a month.
The airport, which is being constructed near the town of Muyil in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, already has a road for the transportation of materials. The road, which will eventually provide airport access, is 27 kilometers south of Tulum and five kilometers from the Muyil archaeological zone.
Engineers are tasked with the building of a passenger terminal, military air base, runway, platforms and taxiways along with a fuel terminal, platform for fixed and rotary wing aircraft, taxi, rental car and bus parking access roads. Before it opens, they will construct a Maya Train station that will connect the Aeropuerto Internacional de Tulum (AIT) with the rest of the Maya Train.
During a morning press conference in May, Brigadier General and engineer Gustavo Ricardo Vallejo Suárez, who built the Felipe Ángeles Airport, reported that the international airport of Tulum will have the capacity to serve four million annual passengers, making it the second largest in the Peninsula.
In addition to meeting the demand for the Cancun International Airport, the Tulum International Airport will have a multipurpose military air base that will be used to help strengthen national airspace security. It will also be a base in the event of forest fires and natural disasters.
The Tulum airport is being built on a 1,200-hectare plot of Ejido land opposite the the Sian Ka’an nature reserve, land that has already been purchased by the federal government. The cost to build the airport is estimated to be around 3.2 billion peso.
When the new airport idea was initially announced in July 2021, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced its inauguration for the end of 2023, however, that inauguration date has since been moved to May of 2024.
At the time of his announcement, López Obrador said that the construction of the train and airport were very important for the south since, for the last 30 years, there has been no development in the southeast, which he pointed out, was abandoned.
He said that after years of abandonment by the state, the Mexican southeast will finally have the development it deserves with the construction of the Maya Train, the Isthmus Train (the 459 kilometers of trans-Isthmus of Tehuantepec that will connect with the Maya Train) and the Tulum airport.
Source: https://www.riviera-maya-news.com/advancements-on-the-tulum-international-airport-being-made/2022.html
