Mexico City Texcoco Airport Aeropuerto de Texcoco, formerly Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de México (NAIM) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Summary | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Map | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Runways | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
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 housing, rising cost and a geographical issue with the site.
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, while construction was already taking place, 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] Felipe Ángeles International Airport opened in March 2022.
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.