Four months ago, Mexico got its air traffic system downgraded from a Category 1 to a Category 2 rating by the US FAA.  This came at the same time that Mexicana was melting down in a great fury and both events were an economic and psychological blow to Mexico.

Well, they just got upgraded back to Category 1 after just four months (nearly unprecedented) and with strong assistance from the FAA in the United States.  In fact, the FAA will continue providing assistance to ensure that Mexico maintains the changes it made and maintains it status, more importantly.

This is great for Mexico and it is a well executed response to this problem.  It’s also great for US airlines because when that status got downgraded, US airlines were suddenly no longer able to codeshare with Mexican airlines and that probably accelerated Mexicana’s demise, to tell the truth.  Now, airlines on both sides can engage in codesharing again (Hello Southwest and Volaris)  and the world airline alliances can get busy in Mexico once more. 

Mexico shouldn’t have let itself get lumped into the ranks of countries like Croatia and Nigeria and their lapse in oversight was a bad thing.  But instead of acting outraged, they got busy and to their credit, they fixed the problems with lightning speed.  Give them credit.

Filed under: Air Traffic Control, Airline News by ajax
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