from the minimization of the matter to the lie of the SICT

Last Friday, the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT) issued a statement about the meeting that Mexican officials had that day in Washington with US officials.

The statement entitled “Binational Priority to recover Category 1 to guarantee safety to 30 million passengers,” says, among other things, that “The Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) agreed that The prompt recovery of the Mexican Category 1 is a priority of the governments of Mexico and the United States, in order to guarantee the air safety of 30 million passengers.

“This was stated by the Mexican ambassador to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, the person in charge of the SICT office, Jorge Nuño Lara, as well as Billy Nolen, interim administrator of the FAA, who also recognized the corrective actions undertaken in terms of security airline by the Mexican authorities.

“The foregoing, after the SICT presented its work plan to the FAA to recover Category 1, which was accepted by the United States aeronautical authorities…”

What the SICT announced turned out to be untrue, according to a note issued that same day by the Reuters news agency that says: “Mexico is making progress towards recovering its Category 1 aviation rating, but the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA) has not yet approved its plan as the Mexican government previously claimed, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. A spokesperson for the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on whether the plan had been approved.

Let us remember that on May 25 of last year, the FAA announced that it had detected at least 28 safety deficiencies within Mexican airlines, which is why it downgraded the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC) from Category 1 to 2. the one in charge of supervising the airlines.

When questioned about the matter, AMLO tried to minimize the seriousness of the degradation: “… it is not a sensitive issue, I see more of a purpose of helping the US lines with a measure of this type.” In other words, the fact that his government could not then and still cannot guarantee the safety of 30 million passengers was not a sensitive issue for him.

Aeroméxico and Volaris, according to a note from Hosteltur, “ruled out that the reduction will affect them” in the category. Perhaps they gave it so as not to contradict the president?

The fact is that, according to High Level, from May 2021 to last August, the degradation of the air authority “has caused economic damage to Mexican airlines for 9,200 million pesos (about 460 million dollars), by limiting their capacity to offer flights to the United States”.

The AFAC demotion issue has been mishandled from the start. First AMLO downplayed it, then two of the country’s most important airlines assured that the measure did not affect them and now the SICT falsely announces, according to Reuters, that the plan to recover Category 1 was accepted by the FAA.

We’re not doing well…

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