With a passenger volume of over two million per year, the main Monterrey airport is the largest in the Centro Norte group of airports that OMA won in a single lot. But lack of space and limited customs facilities have led many Monterrey companies to use other airports for import and export operations, according to a survey conducted by El Norte, the Monterrey-based newspaper publishing group. A huge share of the transborder business goes by truck, of course, but incoming airport managers and investors are making the point that longer trade routes and tighter inventory management systems will inevitably create more air cargo demand. According to Alberto Lens, the coordinator of strategic projects in Nuevo Leon state, the international airport will become more of an intermodal hub, with a goal of handling 7 percent of the national air cargo volume over the mid-term. Similarly, the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Reynosa, centers for Mexico's maquiladora export-assembly factories, have airports which the OMA group also now controls.
Privatization represents a new era in Mexican airports, regardless of where the major hubs emerge.
When it was government run, it was very difficult to buy land, to get permits or to site FBO operations. This year, ICCS has added 9 facilities in Mexico, and plans are for four more in 2001. Lima Beaned So much for the widespread benefits of airline deregulation, at least in Peru. LanChile pulled the two 737-200 aircraft it had leased to LanPeru, which it partly owns, following legal maneuvers that included a Peruvian court's decision to replace LanChile's administration with its own oversight. That it did.