Kaua, Yucatan — By early afternoon today, Chichen Itza International Airport will have welcomed its first commercial flight in many years.
Aereoregional’s Boeing 373-300 will be on a regular schedule, returning three times a week, he said.
Airport director Jorge Carlos González confirmed that around 12:45 p.m., a charter plane from Quito, Ecuador will bring 160 vacationers headed to the Riviera Maya. The arrival kicks off a regular schedule of three weekly flights, he said.
The relatively sleepy airport, which has been overhauled extensively, receives between two and three private flights a day.
The state-owned airport opened in 2000 with a terminal capacity of 200,000 passengers yearly. Aside from being a short drive to Chichen Itza, CZA is equidistant from the three prominent tourist destinations: Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.
But commercial airlines such as Aeromexico, Mexicana, Aerocozumel and American Airlines quickly dropped out when routes there proved unprofitable.