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By KELIN DILLON

During his daily press conference on the morning of Wednesday, June 28, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) confirmed that full operative and administrative control of the Mexico City International Airport (AICM), as well as the operations of various other Mexican airports, will be transferred from the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT) to the Secretariat of the Navy (Semar) by presidential decree.

The news comes just a year and a half after the Semar assumed jurisdiction over the AICM’s security operations, with Wednesday’s announcement extending the navy’s control across the entire facility, which also includes the absorption of Grupo Aeroportuario de la Ciudad de México (GACM) and Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares (ASA) into the Semar.

“The Semar is going to be in charge of the AICM, it is already in charge of surveillance control, it has done a very good job, many are already noticing it, that there is no theft of suitcases as before and care is taken that no contraband enters, that drugs do not enter, and we are preventing it from reaching the extreme that the airport was previously controlled by drug trafficking,” said López Obrador at the time.

Likewise, the federal executive announced that the Semar would now head the operations and administration in the airports of Ciudad del Carmen, Ciudad Obregón and Guaymas, while the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) will add the airports of Tulum, Chetumal, Campeche, Puebla and Nuevo Laredo to its duties alongside the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA).

The decree is currently under review by the National Commission for Regulatory Improvement (Conamer) and is anticipated to take effect 60 days after its publication in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF).