Mexico, New Hub for Aerospace

Queretaro, Mexico In one part of this central Mexico city, technicians overhaul commercial aircraft engines and landing gear. Across town, engineers assemble fuselages for one of the most modern business aircraft on earth, the Learjet 85.

Industrializing nations like Brazil and China get a lot of attention for their thriving aerospace sectors. But Mexico’s aerospace industry, too, has gone wheels up and taken flight, with a lot less world notice.

More than 260 aerospace companies now operate in Mexico, exporting some $4.3 billion in aircraft and parts last year. The Mexican government has set a target of $12 billion in such exports by 2020, a figure that would surpass aerospace exports from Brazil and Spain.

Major clusters of aerospace companies have settled in the Tijuana-Mexicali corridor along the U.S. border, in the city of Chihuahua in northwest Mexico, and surrounding this high desert hub in the geographical center of the country. Smaller clusters have formed in Monterrey in the northeast and in the port city of Guaymas on the Gulf of California in Sonora state.

Local officials are hoping that one day Queretaro (pronounced keh-REH-tah-roh) will be uttered in the same breath as aviation centers like Seattle and Wichita in the United States, Montreal in Canada, and Toulouse in France.

Unlike other up-and-coming aerospace powers, Mexico neither supplies its own defense needs nor produces its own aircraft. But just about every component imaginable for jetliners and helicopters can be manufactured in Mexico today, including jet turbines and fuselages.

It’s only a matter of time before the nation may design its own aircraft, experts here say. Dreams already are taking shape.

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