Felipe Ángeles International Airport — Mexico City, Mexico

Built on a former air force base rather than open farmland, Felipe Ángeles International Airport opened in March 2022 as the centerpiece of Mexico's effort to relieve chronic congestion at the capital's older airport. NLU occupies the Santa Lucía base in Zumpango, State of Mexico, north of the capital, and takes its name from General Felipe Ángeles, an artillery expert and revolutionary-era military strategist executed in 1919 whose reputation was later rehabilitated as a symbol of principled leadership. The project replaced a previously approved but ultimately canceled airport at Texcoco, and Mexico's armed forces, rather than a conventional civil aviation authority, oversee its operations, an arrangement that drew both criticism and praise during construction. Getting airlines and passengers to shift from the established Mexico City airport proved a slow process in the years after opening, even as the government promoted new highway and rail links intended to make the more distant northern site easier to reach from the capital's core.