Mesa El Elefante Airport

The official reason for closure is unknown, as is common for small, private airstrips. However, the most probable cause is economic abandonment. Such airfields are typically built to serve a specific private purpose, like a large ranch (rancho), hunting lodge, or resource exploration site. The airport was likely closed and abandoned when the associated activity ceased, making its maintenance and use no longer necessary or financially viable.

The site is an abandoned airstrip. Current satellite imagery shows a clearly defined but unmaintained dirt/gravel runway on top of the remote mesa. The runway surface is weathered, eroded, and is being slowly reclaimed by sparse desert vegetation. There are no visible signs of any remaining airport infrastructure, such as hangars, terminals, or service buildings. The location remains undeveloped and is not easily accessible by ground transportation.

Mesa El Elefante was a private, rudimentary general aviation airstrip. Its significance was entirely local, providing air access to a highly remote and otherwise difficult-to-reach area on the mesa from which it gets its name. It was never a public or commercial airport and did not handle scheduled flights. Operations would have been limited to light, rugged aircraft (such as Cessna or Piper models) capable of landing and taking off from a short, unpaved, high-elevation runway. Its primary function was to support private agricultural, recreational (hunting), or industrial activities in the desert region northwest of Ciudad Acuña.

There are no known or published plans to reopen Mesa El Elefante Airport. Given its remote location, the deteriorated condition of the runway, the complete lack of infrastructure, and the existence of the larger, paved Ciudad Acuña International Airport (ICAO: MMCC) serving the region, there is no economic or logistical incentive for its reactivation. Any prospect of reopening would depend on a new private entity requiring an airstrip in this specific isolated location, which is considered highly unlikely.