page_title: Mexico City International Airport
section_title: 1960s–1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Mexico City International Airport / History / 1960s–1990s
caption_attribution_description: Arrival in Mexico City. President and Mrs. Kennedy debark Air Force One. Mexico City, Mexico, International Airport.
context_page_description: Mexico City International Airport; officially Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez is an international airport that serves Greater Mexico City. It is Mexico's and Latin America's busiest airport by passenger traffic and aircraft movements. The airport sustains 35,000 jobs directly and around 15,000 indirectly in the immediate area. The airport is owned by Grupo Aeroportuario de la Ciudad de México and operated by Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares, the government-owned corporation, which also operates 22 other airports throughout Mexico. In recent years Toluca Airport has become an alternate airport.
  This airport is served by 30 domestic and international passenger airlines and 17 cargo carriers. As the main hub for Mexico's largest airline Aeroméxico, the airport has become a SkyTeam hub. It is also a hub for Aeromar, Interjet, Volaris, and a focus city for VivaAerobus. On a typical day, more than 100,000 passengers pass through the airport to and from more than 100 destinations on four continents. In 2018, the airport handled 47,700,547 passengers, a 6.6% increase compared to 2017.
context_section_description: On December 2, 1963, Walter C. Buchanan, former director of the Transport and Communications Department (SCT), changed the airport's name "Aeropuerto Central" (Central Airport) to "Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México" (Mexico City International Airport).
  In the 1970s, president Luis Echeverría closed the two remaining shorter runways (13/31 and 5 Auxiliar); on the land of 13-31 a social housing complex was built, Unidad Fiviport. leaving the two parallel runways. In 1980, the terminal was expanded to double its capacity, using a single large terminal rather than multiple terminals as in other airports. Ten years later in 1990, the mixed domestic/international gates were separated to increase the terminal's functionality, along with the separation of domestic and international check-in halls.
  On November 24, 1978, the "Mexico" Control Tower began its operations; it has been in service since then.
  The AICM has continually improved its infrastructure. On August 15, 1979, and after about a year of remodeling works, the terminal building reopened to the public; the airport continued its operations during the renovation, which improved passenger transit with better space distribution in walkways and rooms.
  Due to constant growth in demand of both passengers and operations, on January 13, 1994, the Official Gazette of the Federation, published a presidential decree that prohibited general aviation operations in the AICM, which were moved to Toluca International Airport in order to clear air traffic in the capital's airport.
  Renovations to the AICM continued and on April 11, 1994, a new International Terminal building was ready and operational. It was built by a private contractor according to a co-investment agreement with Airports and Auxiliary Services. In 2001, in order to further improve service to passengers, construction for Module XI started. This Module permitted eight new contact positions in the Airport Terminal, capable of receiving eight regular airplanes, two wide-body, or four narrow-body aircraft.
caption: President and Mrs. Kennedy disembark Air Force One, June 29, 1962
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