Departure
91%
vs 95% ▼ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Hermanos Serdán International Airport (MMPB) serves the city of Puebla from the town of Huejotzingo, high on the central Mexican plateau at 7,333 feet, with a single long paved runway shared by domestic and international jet traffic. For the simulator pilot it offers an interesting high-altitude approach environment ringed by the volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl and the Malinche massif.
Hermanos Serdán International Airport is the principal air gateway for the city of Puebla and the wider Puebla-Tlaxcala metropolitan area, lying in the municipality of Huejotzingo some 23 kilometres from the historic centre of Puebla. It is a civil, government-operated field handling scheduled domestic and international airline traffic, most notably as a base for Volaris, and is named in honour of Aquiles, Máximo and María del Carmen Serdán, leading figures of the Maderista anti-re-election movement that preceded the Mexican Revolution. Its single very long runway and high field elevation make it a distinctive high-altitude destination for simulator pilots, set against a dramatic backdrop of snow-capped volcanoes.
The airport sits in the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley in the municipality of Huejotzingo, with parts of its site also touching Tlaltenango and Juan C. Bonilla, roughly 23 to 25 kilometres northwest of downtown Puebla. It forms part of Mexico's Sistema Metropolitano de Aeropuertos, a network of fields intended to relieve pressure on Mexico City's main airport, though its own capacity remains well under-used relative to the size of the Puebla valley's population. Puebla Approach and Tower provide air traffic service in the surrounding controlled airspace.
The field has one physical runway, 17/35, oriented almost due north-south. It is 11,841 feet long with a hard surface and is lit, giving ample length for jet operations despite the airport's high elevation; no ILS is available.
Arriving and departing traffic works Puebla Approach and Tower on 118.2 MHz. There is no ILS at the field, so instrument arrivals rely on other published procedures rather than a precision approach.
The airport lies beneath some of central Mexico's most prominent volcanic landmarks, with the snow-capped cones of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl visible to the southeast and the Malinche massif forming a distinctive backdrop to the north, useful for orientation when inbound to the field.
The airport opened on 18 November 1985 with an inaugural flight from Guadalajara operated by a Mexicana de Aviación Boeing 727-200. On 25 February 1993 Puebla Air Lines (PAL) began operations with a fleet of three Boeing 727s, using the field as its base, but the carrier was forced to suspend operations in June 1995 amid the national economic crisis that followed the December 1994 devaluation. On 23 January 1996 the airport, previously a domestic aerodrome, was formally designated an international airport under the name Hermanos Serdán by publication in the Diario Oficial de la Federación. From 2001 it was concessioned to the Operadora Estatal de Aeropuertos for operation and development, before Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares took over administration in 2011 following the dissolution of that state operator amid budgetary irregularities. A logistics cargo centre, the Centro Logístico Aeroportuario, opened in 2007, and the airport has handled around two thousand tonnes a year of freight including textiles, automotive parts, mail and perishable goods such as fruit and flowers. MexicanaLink briefly opened connecting flights from Puebla to Las Vegas, New York and Los Angeles from 27 October 2009, ending when Mexicana de Aviación and its subsidiaries ceased operations on 28 August 2010. From 12 May 2012 the airport has on several occasions been closed temporarily because of volcanic ash from the nearby Popocatépetl volcano. Copa Airlines served Panama City from the airport during 2015-2016 before withdrawing the route for lack of demand, and a planned 2020 expansion by Interjet to Houston, New York and Acapulco was never realised following that airline's suspension of operations.
The airport is operated by the federal Olmeca-Maya-Mexica group and functions as a hub for Volaris, with services also offered by Viva and United Express among other carriers, alongside cargo operators. Its passenger terminal, substantially enlarged in recent years, is designed to handle around 450 passengers an hour from six category D aircraft stands, and the field has recorded historically high passenger and operational volumes in recent reporting.