Canada to resume flights to Mexico in September

From September to December 2021, the airports with the highest number of scheduled seats from Canada to Mexico are Cancun with 81,007 seats and Mexico City with 78,432 seats.

Canada to resume flights to Mexico in September
Photo by Natali Quijano / Unsplash

As of September, Canada will resume its flights to Mexico, including Cancun in its destinations, as announced by the Federal Secretary of Tourism, Miguel Torruco. The official also informed that from September to December 2021, the airports with the highest number of seats scheduled from Canada to Mexico by Air Canada are: Cancun with 81,007 seats and Mexico City with 78,432 seats, both representing 81.4% of the Canadian market.

For the Mexican Caribbean, Canada is the second most important international market by volume of travelers per year, only behind the United States. In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, Cancun International Airport attracted 1,186,480 travelers from the country of the maple leaf. By 2020 that figure plummeted to only 475,843 tourists, a drop of 59.89%, as a result of the pandemic.

In the January-May period of this year, the report of the Ministry of Tourism of Quintana Roo states that only 18,809 Canadians have been attracted due to the total suspension of flights from that country.

With the announcement of the resumption of flights between Canada and Mexico, the federal Ministry of Tourism anticipates that Air Canada alone will mobilize between September and December of this year a total of approximately 196,000 passengers, a figure higher than the 171,617 passengers that the same company transported between September and December of 2019.

The announcement of the resumption of flights is not definitive, as it has been postponed on at least two previous occasions. First, the resumption was scheduled for May of this year, but it was postponed to July and again the activity has been extended until next September. So far it is known that the relaxation of non-essential travel restrictions will allow people to leave or re-enter the country as long as they have completed their vaccination schedule at least 14 days before their trip.

In a previous interview, Dario Flota Ocampo, director of the Quintana Roo Tourism Promotion Council (CPTQ), commented that the first months of the year are traditionally the highest season of the Canadian market for Cancun and the Riviera Maya; however, the sanitary restrictions imposed by the Canadian government due to the pandemic almost completely inhibited the arrival of these travelers, who are by volume the second most important international travelers for the state, only behind U.S. tourism.