On the night of May 31, 2025, Lima moved its entire airport into a new home: a 270,000-square-meter terminal three times the old one's size, built for 40 million passengers a year — and the first piece of South America's first true Airport City.
The switch was surgical: a twelve-hour pause between May 31 and June 1, 2025, after a two-week 'White March' soft launch that processed 19,000 trial passengers — then every flight moved into a terminal three times larger than the one it replaced. The $2.4 billion program by Lima Airport Partners and Fraport also delivered a second runway (operational since April 2023), a new control tower and the continent's first digital apron, where cameras guide aircraft to their stands.
Inside: 46 gates, CT security scanners, biometric e-gates, 8,000 square meters of restaurants led by the Perusuyo food hall curated by the chefs of Maido and Mayta, and an anti-seismic skeleton of more than 1,100 isolators designed to keep operating after a major earthquake. Around it, Fraport is building what it calls South America's first Airport City — hotels, logistics, free zones and offices on the airport's 935 hectares, with some 120,000 jobs projected.
LIM is Peru's front door: two-thirds of the country's international tourists — 2.16 million in 2024 — clear immigration here, and total traffic ran at 22.9 million passengers in 2023, the last full year in the old building. LATAM uses Lima as its west-coast hub, stitching Cusco, Arequipa and Iquitos to Santiago, São Paulo, Mexico City, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam and the U.S. gateways; OAG already ranks it among the world's 50 most connected hubs.
Practicalities: arrive two hours early domestic, three international; the airport sits in Callao, 11 km from the historic center and 17 km from Miraflores — 45 to 75 minutes by road. The international-to-international connection fee (TUUA) still applies, domestic connections are free; and note there is no walking out of this airport — pick your ride before you land.
Our read: the new terminal is genuinely world-class — but it changed the geometry, not the distance. The ride to Miraflores is still the variable; land before 21:00 if you want the Airport Express, otherwise take an authorized counter taxi and ignore every offer in the hall. If you connect onward to Cusco, build in four hours, not two: morning fog closes this airport in July and August, and the morning Cusco flight you miss is a day of Machu Picchu logistics unwound.
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