How Bogotá's gold became the most busy airport in Latin America, overcoming the domain of São Paulo and CDMX decades

On the other hand, 45,359,485 passed through the Benito Juárez de la CDMX and 43,565,746 through the Guarulhos de São Paulo the same year.

And there not for your current leadership. El Dorado also leads rankings in air load volume and aircraft movement in the region.

It is a milestone that authorities of the Colombian capital celebrate and that analysts flatter and question about the high competition of the sector and the challenges of El Dorado, which before the increase in passengers is considered small and sometimes bureaucratic.

María Fernanda Sánchez remembers when just 20 years ago Lucía “very small, like a large, little functional, old house, with just six or seven exit doors.”

Then he was far from looking at you to several airports from the Latin American capitals.

“Today there are dozens of doors, a great infrastructure, modernity, efficiency and cutting -edge technology,” says Sánchez, an expert in tourism and director of the Tourism Innovation Consulting consultant, BBC Mundo.

In 2006, Sánchez said, the Government decided to remodel it, expand it and transform it progressively.

The project coincided with a transformation of international perception of Colombia that the experts consulted by BBC Mundo say that it goes hand in hand with the airport takeoff.

“It was the time of the democratic security policy of Álvaro Uribe. The country began to transmit a perception of security in which one could visit it without happening more,” says Sánchez.

That policy, although it has been harshly criticized by the reports of abuse of State forces and paramilitary groups towards the civilian population, reduced rates of violence and weakened the leftist guerrillas at war with the State.

Years later, in 2016, the FARC and the Colombian government signed a historic peace agreement that further changed the perception of Colombia.

“Until those years, for many we were only Cartagena, a Caribbean city that was almost considered out of a country branded as violent and insecure,” recalls Sánchez.

Since then, the number of tourists has been increasing in Colombia, with the collapse that caused the coronavirus pandemic in between, to reach record figures of 6.7 million foreign visitors in 2024.

The majority enter a renewed and expanded gold that, located in an advantageous location, put himself at the head of the most competitive airports in the region.

If we place Mexico City, Bogotá and São Paulo on the map and look at some popular destinations for Latin Americans such as Madrid in Spain, Miami and New York in the United States or London in the United Kingdom, it is easy to deduce that Bogotá, open to the Atlantic, close to the Caribbean and near the line of Ecuador has a strategic connection as a port of entrance to South America.

“We are about three and a half hours or less than several of the main destinations in the region in Central America, South America and Miami in the US,” says Andrés Santamaría, director of the District Tourism Institute of the Mayor's Office of Bogotá.

The airlines also take advantage of the height of Bogotá.

The Colombian capital is more than 2,600 meters above sea level, being the third highest in the region behind Quito in Ecuador, 2,800 meters, and the administrative capital of Bolivia, La Paz, 3,600 meters.

In an airport located at a high height, Sánchez and Santamaría stand out, the airplanes save fuel and time in takeoffs and landings, reaching the required height with greater efficiency.

A fuel and time savings, experts say, can also have an impact on a more competitive air ticket price for customers.

“With these conditions it does not strange that a prestigious firm such as Emirates Airlines has installed daily flights between Bogotá-Miami-Dubái and that in El Dorado so many airlines converge with codes shared with scales here,” says Sánchez.

In this high volume of passengers, authorities in Bogotá see a tourist and business reef to exploit that, they trust, further swell the figures of El Dorado.

The tourist boom of Colombia and its capital is still seen with surprise by some traveled Bogotans who often considered their city as “the ugly capital of Latin America” ​​or saw how Medellín or Cartagena stole more prominence between international tourists.

“Of those more than 45 million passengers, around six million are international in transit, which is an opportunity for Bogotá. It is something that many cities do in the world: attract passengers to stay more time and that in the future think of Bogotá as a tourist destination,” says Santamaría to BBC Mundo.

Several companies and institutions seem to coordinate for this purpose.

For example, the Colombian airline Avianca, one of the oldest in the world and whose main hub is Bogotá, has a strategy called stopover in which it offers passengers in transit to change your free tickets for the following 24 hours.

And tourism, transport, hospitality and authorities work to make visible the city more as an attractive gastronomic and cultural destination for short and long stay passengers.

They are also designed for the high volume of travelers by business.

“Bogotá has been working in meetings tourism for some time, with congresses, symposia, courses, meetings. The amount of events that the city is welcomed thanks to the Airport,” says Sánchez.

“If I have to make a meeting with my executives, the point for everyone in Latin America is Bogotá. There are flights from all over the region, as well as important airports in Europe and the United States,” adds the expert.

Analysts are clear that if the Bogotá airport grows, the city too and vice versa.

“If this coordination is implemented well, it could give us between 700,000 and one million more passengers a year,” says Santamaría.

But one thing is intentions and another reality, which does not get rid of challenges.

Several capitals of Latin America compete for the heavens and leadership of Bogotá has its limitations.

Mexico City, in addition to Benito Juárez, inaugurated the Felipe Ángeles International Airport in 2022.

It is a factor that even the Mayor's Office of Bogotá recognizes as a key in the reduction of passengers at the main airport of the Mexican capital and the climb of El Dorado in the ranking.

On the other hand, Lima inaugurated in May 2025 its new airport, in an advantageous location for destinations from Canada and Argentina in narrow fuselage aircraft and a greater closeness to Asia and China, a power that in recent decades close investment and cooperation ties with South America.

It is precisely the need to modernize and expand what gives doubts about the short and medium term leadership of the gold.

“Today he knows how to overcome the large number of passengers, but he will have to be expanded to continue growing. It is evident. There are extension plans by 2027,” says Santamaría.

El Dorado, with two terminals, competes against the two of Benito Juárez in Mexico plus his new Felipe Ángeles and the three Guarulos terminals in São Paulo.

“We would grow a lot with the expansion of the airport, but there is a challenge in meeting the objective and the times. Colombia and Bogotá did not expect to have this tourist perception with which they are seen now,” Santamaría acknowledges.

Other concerns are also glimpsed on the horizon.

First the bureaucracy, which permeates practically every Colombian state institution.

Passengers and analysts like Sanchez complain about the long migration times that dilate the experience of the trip.

“The Bogotá boom and its airport got out of migration.

“And finally, security. Although the perception is very different from a few decades, I do detect a growing concern following cases such as the murder of Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay recently in the city,” adds Sánchez.

If these challenges weaken the dynamism of Bogotá as a tourist and airport in the coming months, it will soon be known with the update of figures and rankings.

For now, authorities and companies try to maximize a boom that expect it to be much more than a fashion.

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