Commercial aviation in Mexico City grew up on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco, where military fliers had operated since the 1910s. The civil airport in the Balbuena and Texcoco area formally opened in 1931 and expanded rapidly as Mexicana and Aeroméxico's predecessors built national networks.
Jet-age terminals and runway upgrades followed in the 1950s and 1960s. The airport became the undisputed center of Mexican aviation, sitting only a few miles east of the historic downtown. In 2006 it was officially named Benito Juárez International, honoring Mexico's revered nineteenth-century president.
Terminal 2 opened in 2007 on the opposite side of the field as an Aeroméxico base, connected to Terminal 1 by an airtrain. The two-runway airport was already straining against demand.
A vast replacement airport at Texcoco, designed by Norman Foster and Fernando Romero, began construction in the 2010s, only to be canceled in 2018 after a public consultation held by incoming president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Instead, the converted military base at Santa Lucía opened in 2022 as Felipe Ángeles International. The government capped hourly operations at Benito Juárez, which nonetheless remains one of Latin America's two busiest airports.