The OnBoard Courier for Mexico

After it come Cancún (CUN) with 85 destinations and about 183.5 departures a day, Guadalajara (GDL) with 67 destinations and about 162.3 departures a day, Monterrey (MTY) with 64 destinations and about 159.4 departures a day, Tijuana (TIJ) with 45 destinations and about 115.4 departures a day and Mexico City (NLU) with 41 destinations and about 83.4 departures a day. Those are the alternates. When the primary gateway is shut by weather, a strike or a curfew, they are what a courier is rebooked through. Between them the 17 airports in Mexico that publish departures schedule about 1,399.1 movements a day and reach 604 separate destinations, counting each city once per airport.

Reach matters more than frequency for a hand carry, because a courier flies whatever is leaving. From MEX alone, 1,431 airports are reachable with exactly one change, on top of the 106 served nonstop. A gateway that multiplies its own reach that far with one change is a hub in the useful sense: almost anywhere is two boarding passes away. It is computed from the scheduled network rather than from a booking engine.

67 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country stays inside it, across 51 domestic destinations. That matters on a hand carry because it decides whether the last leg can be flown or has to be driven. A consignee outside the gateway city is then a connecting flight, not a four hour drive.

Outside its own borders the country is tied most closely to the United States, about 324.1 flights a day, Canada, about 27.9 flights a day, Colombia, about 20.5 flights a day, Panama, about 17.6 flights a day and Spain, about 13.7 flights a day. Those are the markets a courier can reach from Mexico without a long connection, and they are also where a third country leg most often starts: an item that has to go from Mexico to somewhere with no direct service usually travels through one of them.

52 airlines fly out of Mexico in this data. Counted by how many of the country's routes each one appears on, the widest networks belong to Volaris on 256 routes, VivaAerobus on 220 routes, Aeromexico on 133 routes, United Airlines on 35 routes and American Airlines on 32 routes. The carrier matters to a hand carry more than it does to freight, because cabin baggage rules, what counts as an acceptable carry on item and whether an extra seat can be bought are set by the airline and not by the airport.

The longest single sector out of MEX in this data runs to Tokyo, Japan (NRT), 11,254 km by great circle. Great circle is not a flown distance and will read short against a real routing, but it is the honest way to state a reach: it says what one aircraft does without stopping, which is exactly the question a courier desk is asking.

Nothing in the network file leaves an Emirates airport for Mexico without a change. The best connection it holds runs Dubai to Paris and then Paris to Mexico City (MEX), and the weaker of the two legs, the one that decides whether the connection actually holds, runs about 3.4 times a day. The alternatives are Cancún via Madrid, about 2.7 a day on the weaker leg, Guadalajara via Chicago, about 2.3 a day on the weaker leg and Monterrey via Madrid, about 1.6 a day on the weaker leg.

A connection is not a defect on this kind of work, it is the normal case, and it changes only one thing: the courier stays with the consignment through the transfer rather than handing it to anyone. Baggage is not checked through, the item does not enter a transit shed, and the chain of custody survives the change of aircraft because the same person carries it onto the second one.

Hand carry demand is not spread evenly across a country, it sits where something expensive stops when a part is missing. The industrial geography file behind this site records 1 such site in Mexico, across automotive: Volkswagen at Puebla. These are public manufacturing and research sites, named as the reason a lane exists. Nothing here says any of them is a customer of any courier operator.

Take the first of them. Volkswagen at Puebla: Assembly for the North American market. German tooling, Mexican line, and an ocean in between. That is the shape of the work in Mexico, and it is why the airports above matter more than the distance does.

This site publishes 32 lane pages that cross the border of Mexico. Leaving Mexico: Mexico City to Frankfurt, Monterrey to Detroit and Queretaro to Toulouse. Arriving: Amsterdam to Mexico City, Amsterdam to Monterrey, Chicago to Queretaro, Detroit to Monterrey, Detroit to Silao, Dubai to Mexico City, El Paso to Ciudad Juarez and Frankfurt to Mexico City.

Each of those has its own page with the flying time, the gateway pair and what actually moves on it. Read together they say something the individual pages do not: the places Mexico is connected to on this desk are Amsterdam, Chicago, Detroit, Dubai, El Paso, Frankfurt, Houston, Los Angeles, Madrid and Milan, plus 10 more. A lane page exists because the traffic on it is real, not because the pair looked plausible on a map.

Counting what is already published, this site holds 8 city pages, 6 standalone city pages, 17 Atlas entries, 3 airport pages and 32 lane pages for Mexico, and every one of them is linked from this page. That is the point of a country index: the material exists, it was written one page at a time, and until now there was no single place that connected it.

Alongside the reference material there is the country desk page, the entry and formalities guide and the courier recruitment page for people who already fly this market. This is one of the most heavily covered markets on the site, and the depth is the point: a shipper in a particular city with a particular part does not want a country page, they want their own.