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Mexico's GAP Airport Group May Passenger Traffic Rises 39%
 Paul Kiernan - Dow Jones
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June 11, 2010
Mexico City - Mexico's Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico SAB said Thursday that passenger traffic at its 12 airports rose 39% last month from May 2009, when the local H1N1 outbreak caused local air travel to dry up.
Traffic was 1.68 million passengers in May, said the company, known as GAP, in a filing with the Mexican Stock Exchange.
GAP's domestic traffic rose 32% from a year ago to 1.14 million passengers, while international passenger traffic jumped 55% to 539,000.
Airport and airline traffic plummeted across the board in May 2009 as Mexico - at the height of its worst economic crisis in more than a decade - was unfortunate enough to be the first country in which the new A/H1N1 influenza strain was discovered.
Due to easy year-on-year comparisons, Mexico's three publicly traded airport operators - GAP, Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste and Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte - all saw strong growth in their operating numbers last month.
But GAP's traffic fell well short of the 1.91 million passengers that passed through its airports in May 2008.
The same is true of its rivals, known as Asur and OMA, suggesting that despite the Mexican economy's current recovery, the road that lies ahead will remain difficult for a sector that has suffered during the past two years from record jet-fuel prices, a brutal economic downturn and an unexpected health contingency.
Passenger traffic at GAP's busiest airport, in Guadalajara, jumped 48% last month to 610,100.
During the first five months of 2010, traffic rose 5.2% from a year ago to 8.59 million passengers.
GAP's local B shares and American Depository Receipts have been suspended from trading since last week, when the company failed to ratify or replace certain board members at a shareholders' assembly.
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