Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
General Felipe Ángeles International Airport (MMSM) lies north of Mexico City at Zumpango, Estado de México, on the site of a former Mexican Air Force base. Opened as part of the capital's expanded airport system, it offers a very long, high-altitude runway that makes it a distinctive destination for simulator pilots exploring the Valley of Mexico. Its military heritage and rapid civil conversion give it an unusual character among Mexico's major airports.
General Felipe Ángeles International Airport, commonly abbreviated AIFA, is a large international airport built on the grounds of the former Santa Lucía military air base north of Mexico City. It was developed as a civil counterpart to the Mexican Air Force facility that continues to share the site, and forms part of the wider Metropolitan Airport System alongside Mexico City's Benito Juárez airport and Toluca. For a simulator pilot, the field is notable both for its very high field elevation and for its unusually long runway, giving a real sense of high-altitude operations in a wide, open setting away from the congestion of central Mexico City.
The airport sits at Zumpango, in the State of Mexico, some 45 kilometres from Mexico City's Benito Juárez International Airport. It occupies the former Base Aérea Militar No. 1 "General Alfredo Lezama Álvarez", which was operated by the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (SEDENA) through the Mexican Air Force before the site's civil airport was built alongside it. The field forms one node of the Sistema Aeroportuario Metropolitano (SAM), the metropolitan airport system that also includes Mexico City and Toluca airports, intended to spread air traffic across the Valley of Mexico.
The airport is built around a single main runway aligned 04/22. The 04 direction is recorded at 11,312 feet in length and the 22 direction at 9,928 feet; both are hard-surfaced and lit. There is no ILS installed.
No communications frequencies or callsign are currently published for the field, and it has no ILS. Pilots planning a visit in the simulator should expect to rely on visual procedures and general area charts rather than published instrument approaches or radio data.
The land occupied by the airport was formerly Base Aérea Militar No. 1 "General Alfredo Lezama Álvarez", a Mexican Air Force base at Santa Lucía in Zumpango, State of Mexico. The site was chosen for conversion into a civil international airport after the cancellation of the Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de México (NAIM) project, a decision that followed a public consultation held in October 2018. Construction of the new airport was entrusted to SEDENA, working through a grouping of military engineers from all specialities. The concession title formally establishing the Aeropuerto Internacional Felipe Ángeles was published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 15 October 2021, and the field was conceived as a way to relieve congestion at Mexico City's existing airport and to improve connectivity across the National Airport System.
The airport remains linked to its military origins, continuing to share its site with Mexican Air Force operations, and it functions as one of the three airports of the Metropolitan Airport System serving the Valley of Mexico alongside Mexico City and Toluca. It is classed as a large airport offering scheduled airline service.
