When the Tulum airport opened in late 2023, hopes were high that it would become a boost for the fast-growing tourism business in the region. That has not happened. Initial interest in flying to the airport has waned, and now even Aeromexico has filed an exit from the market at the end of this month.

Cancún has long been the center of tourism on the Yucatán Peninsula. The airport there is large with up to 350 daily flights. There are more flights from there to the US than there are domestically, but there are also flights to places as far south as Argentina and to more than 15 countries in Europe. It is a tourism powerhouse.

Tulum, meanwhile, hit its heyday a few hundred years ago. It was a major Mayan site that was effectively abandoned in the 1500s. The modern town of Tulum was basically nothing until the government built a highway through the area in the 1970s. Even then, not much happened until the 1990s when tourism grew to the Mayan ruins.

During that time, Cancún remained the tourism stronghold, but the coast was getting crowded. So developers started clearing out the mangroves along the coast and building resorts in between Cancún and Tulum (and now beyond). The so-called Riviera Maya became a playground for those wanting a quieter resort experience.

At the same time, ex-pats found the town of Tulum and started to move in droves. It’s still not big, but it is more than it has been in the last 500 years. Let me show you a map.

This makes it very clear why the government decided to build the Tulum airport. The drive from the Cancún airport to Tulum is about 1.5 hours, plus you have to get by the infamous El Guapo. That’s not an easy trip, so this more convenient airport built next to the new Mayan train (Tren Maya) seemed like an opportunity. In practice, it has not worked, at least not yet.

Let’s start by looking at the domestic market.

Tulum Domestic Departures by Airline

^{Data via Cirium}

When the airport opened in Dec 2023, it was just for domestic flights, and both Aeromexico and then-Viva Aerobus jumped right in. Aeromexico started with double daily from Mexico City/MEX and soon after moved the flights to Mexico City/AIFA instead.

Viva tried both of those plus Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Tijuana. In April 2024, state-sponsored Mexicana started AIFA flights of its own, and then in Dec 2024, Volaris joined the party with a Guadalajara flight. That is when domestic departures peaked at the airport with a little more than eight daily. It’s been downhill ever since.

Viva ended MEX and Tijuana a few months after starting while Guadalajara disappeared as soon as Volaris showed up. AIFA is planned at less than daily in winter, and Monterrey is even suspended in darkest winter while staying at 2-3x weekly otherwise.

Volaris has cut its flight from daily to 3-4x weekly. Even Mexicana, which started with 10x weekly B737-800s during peak, is down to just a daily Embraer 195-E2 now. And then there’s Aeromexico.

In Oct 2025, Aeromexico moved one of the two daily AIFA flights back to MEX. By May 2026, AIFA had dropped to 4x weekly. And now, after filing this past weekend, Aeromexico will leave entirely this month. That leaves two to four daily domestic flights through the entire winter season.

Now, remember that I said Cancún had more flights to the US than anywhere else? It’s that tourism market that really powers that airport’s engine. So if US traffic held up to Tulum, the drop in domestic flying wouldn’t be as calamitous. But it has not done that.

Tulum International Departures by Airline

^{Data via Cirium}

Tulum opened up for international service in March 2024, and the airlines raced into the market as quickly as they could. We actually handed out a Cranky Network Award that year that we split into smaller trophies to give to everyone who announced service. That even included Spirit, who never actually started flying there… which makes Spirit the smartest airline of the bunch. In this case.

American came roaring in with double daily to DFW alongside one daily each to Charlotte and Miami. United did Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Newark. Delta was in Atlanta, of course, but it also planned winter flights from Detroit and Minneapolis/St Paul. Even JetBlue tried JFK.

And it wasn’t just about the US. Air Canada, Air Transat, Sunwing, and WestJet combined to serve as many as five cities from Tulum in peak winter while avianca tried Bogotá. Even Discover tried to make a Frankfurt flight work. During the summer, Copa started flights to Panama City.

Almost none of this worked. The airport peaked in international flying in January 2025 with about a dozen daily flights. It has been a downhill slide ever since.

Copa gave up after that first summer while avianca and Discover each only lasted that first winter. Volaris very briefly tried San José (CR), but that lasted two months. No other Mexican airline has even tried to fly internationally. JetBlue made it through one summer, then went winter-only, and then pulled out entirely in March of this year.

The Canadian carriers have remained strong in winter only, and that’s because Canadians will go ANYWHERE that’s warm. With Cuba off limits, that probably helps support the Tulum flights even more.

But it’s now down to only the big three US carriers to fly year-round. Delta does only Atlanta now, with 1x daily in winter and 1x weekly in summer. United only flies Houston with 5x weekly peaking at 1x daily during winter. Newark will still have three flights right around the holidays and no more, so that doesn’t even count.

Even American is down to only DFW year-round at 1x daily during summer and decidedly less in winter. Miami is still there on a similar pattern except it takes off a couple months in fall.

So what happened? Most likely, people just stuck with Cancún, because it had a lot more frequencies to a lot more places in the US. Fares started off at a premium from Tulum, but it didn’t take long for the airlines to realize that wasn’t working, so the fares went down.

On top of that, the airlines just couldn’t find enough people to take those flights. The American Charlotte flight topped an 80 percent load factor one month in summer. Most were in the 60 percent range. JetBlue did ok during the peak winter but even that meant barely filling 80 percent of flights. The shoulder times were much worse.

Sure, some flights did better than others, but Cancún flights from hubs never fall below 90 percent during peak months. It was a very rare occurrence for Tulum to ever exceed 90 percent.

It’s no surprise to see US airlines back off when they see these kind of results, but for Aeromexico to leave? That’s a shocker. This was one of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s pet projects, so you would just assume that the Mexican carriers would have to be there for political reasons. If Aeromexico is gone, I have to wonder just how far behind Viva and especially Volaris will be.

It’s possible that someday this airport will catch on, but for now, the only thing it can count on is having Mexicana in the market. That’s… something.