Cancún Down 8.6%, Tijuana Down 12.1%: Two of Mexico's Listed Airport Groups Report a Weaker September
Two of Mexico's listed airport groups published their September 2026 passenger numbers within a day of each other, and the Mexican half of both reports points the same way: fewer passengers than a year earlier. Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP) reported on 6 October that traffic across its 14 airports fell 7.3% to 4,081,900 passengers. Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR) reported on 7 October that its Mexican airports fell 6.1%, with Cancún, its largest, down 8.6%.
The detail below comes from the two operators' own statements, read alongside regional reporting on Cancún's slump. The picture is not uniformly negative: Guadalajara's international terminal, Colombia, and several smaller Mexican airports grew.
GAP: capacity cuts and a late-month hurricane
GAP operates twelve Mexican airports plus Montego Bay and Kingston in Jamaica. Its September total of 4,081,900 passengers was 7.3% below September 2025. The company named two drivers: airlines reduced available seat capacity by 7.2% year on year, and Hurricane Polo disrupted operations at Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos in the final days of the month.
The domestic market took the larger hit. Domestic terminal passengers totalled 2,552,100, down 9.5%. International passengers totalled 1,529,800, down 3.2%. GAP singled out weakness on several domestic routes, including Puerto Vallarta to Tijuana, Puerto Vallarta to Monterrey, Los Cabos to Guadalajara, and Tijuana to Guadalajara. On the international side it pointed to lower traffic between Los Cabos and Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Load factor, the share of seats filled, edged up to 81.0% from 80.7% a year earlier.
Airport by airport
Total September traffic at GAP's larger airports, with the change from September 2025:
- Tijuana: 830,100 passengers, down 12.1%
- Montego Bay: 238,300, down 16.6%
- Puerto Vallarta: 307,100, down 10.4%
- Los Cabos: 374,900, down 7.5%
- Aguascalientes: 79,700, up 5.1%
- Manzanillo: 12,700, up 14.0%
Guadalajara, GAP's busiest airport, was the notable split case. Its domestic traffic fell 5.6% to 935,400 passengers, while its international traffic rose 10.0% to 463,900. Tijuana's domestic terminal lost 17.2% (559,400 passengers), while its international terminal edged up 0.8% to 270,700. Mexicali's domestic traffic fell 24.1% and Morelia's 23.2%, the steepest domestic declines in the table.
Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta, the two airports named for hurricane disruption, both lost more international than domestic traffic in percentage terms. Los Cabos international fell 14.7% to 168,000 and Puerto Vallarta international fell 12.0% to 94,500. In Jamaica, Montego Bay's 238,300 passengers were all international and Kingston's international traffic fell 3.8% to 132,100.
Year to date
For January to September, GAP carried 45,792,600 passengers, down 4.2%. Domestic traffic was 26,709,500 (down 1.3%) and international traffic 19,083,000 (down 8.0%). Montego Bay is the weakest performer over nine months, down 25.5% to 2.866 million. Puerto Vallarta is down 12.3% to 4.540 million, Los Cabos down 5.6% to 5.351 million, and Tijuana down 5.2% to 8.984 million. Guadalajara is the exception, up 4.2% to 14.272 million.
GAP also reports users of the Cross Border Xpress bridge that links Tijuana airport with San Diego. September users numbered 266,200, up 1.4%, while the nine-month total of 2,856,400 is 4.3% lower.
ASUR: Mexico weak, the rest of the network steadier
ASUR's headline number looks flat. Total passenger traffic in September was 8,656,117, against 8,659,156 a year earlier, a change the company rounds to zero. But the comparison is not like for like. ASUR said September included the first full month of operations in Brazil, Costa Rica, Curaçao and Ecuador following the closing of its acquisition of CPC Aeroportos, together totalling about 3.9 million passengers.
By country, the statement shows:
- Colombia: 1,474,663 passengers, up 5.7%, with domestic up 5.9% and international up 4.9%
- Puerto Rico (San Juan): 810,085, up 3.1%
- Brazil: up 2.6%, with domestic up 2.9% and international down 11.5%
- Ecuador: up 1.7%, with international up 3.2%
- Curaçao: down 0.9%
- Costa Rica: down 6.1%, with international down 6.4% and domestic up 16.3%
- Mexico: 2,446,399, down 6.1%, with domestic down 3.7% and international down 9.8%
Across the whole group, domestic traffic rose 1.8% to 6,431,646 and international traffic fell 4.9% to 2,224,471. Year to date, ASUR's total is 57,151,121, down 0.7%; Mexico is down 3.1%, Colombia is up 6.5%, and Puerto Rico is down 2.9%.
Cancún
Cancún handled 1,607,088 passengers in September, down 8.6% from 1,758,719. The fall was concentrated in the international terminal, which dropped 11.8% to 848,775 passengers. Domestic traffic fell 4.8% to 758,313. For the nine months, Cancún has handled 20,882,658 passengers, down 5.9%, with international traffic down 6.5% to 13,779,382.
Other ASUR Mexican airports were more mixed. Mérida carried 311,242 passengers (down 0.9%) and is up 6.1% year to date. Villahermosa grew 9.4% to 122,267, Tapachula 7.6% to 40,721, and Cozumel 5.4% to 35,657. Veracruz fell 2.3% to 147,969, Oaxaca fell 11.3% to 121,878, and Minatitlán fell 10.9% to 10,574. Huatulco was flat at 49,003 (up 0.6%).
Small international bases at several airports grew sharply from low starting points: Villahermosa's international traffic rose from 1,869 to 7,773 passengers and Tapachula's from 1,516 to 3,917.
Brazil and the acquired airports
In Brazil, ASUR reports blocks of airports rather than single hubs. Belo Horizonte's domestic traffic was flat at 1,076,693 passengers, but its international traffic fell 17.0% to 38,024. Foz do Iguaçu's domestic traffic rose 29.3% to 230,776, Navegantes rose 8.0% to 193,574, and Curitiba fell 2.4% to 487,905. In the central block, Goiânia fell 8.2% to 302,447 while Petrolina rose 38.9% to 50,805. Quito carried 215,002 domestic and 228,668 international passengers, and San José in Costa Rica 396,676 international passengers, down 6.4%.
ASUR's year-to-date table shows only the single month for Brazil, Costa Rica, Curaçao and Ecuador, so the group's 57,151,121 nine-month total mixes nine months of Mexico, Colombia and Puerto Rico with one month of the acquired airports. The Mexican and Colombian rows are therefore the cleaner read of underlying trends, and the group-level percentages should be treated with that in mind.
What is behind Cancún's decline
Neither statement lays out a full explanation for Cancún, but regional reporting does. UPI reported on 29 September that Cancún's international passengers fell 15% in August to 1.19 million, and that total airport traffic that month was down 9.3% at about 2.1 million. It said the Cancún airport director attributed part of the loss of international traffic to Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy and shutdown. It also reported about 20% fewer scheduled flights from the United States in summer 2026, in a market where the United States accounted for 60.6% of Cancún's international passengers in 2025.
ASUR's September figures show Cancún's international terminal down 11.8%, against the 15% August fall reported by UPI, with domestic traffic down 4.8%.
What to watch
For GAP, the key question is how much of the 7.2% seat cut is seasonal and how much carries into winter, since Tijuana, Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos depend heavily on the domestic and U.S. routes the company named. For ASUR, the group-wide comparison remains distorted until the acquired airports have a full year of comparable data.
Sources
- Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, "Reports a Passenger Traffic Decrease in September 2026 of 7.3% Compared to 2025", GlobeNewswire, 6 October 2026
- ASUR, "ASUR Announces Total Passenger Traffic for September 2026", 7 October 2026 (company release, PDF)
- UPI, "Cancun tourism slump deepens as U.S. flights to Mexico decline", 29 September 2026