(Updates with details) MEXICO CITY, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Passenger traffic at Mexican airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico (GAP) is unlikely to recover to pre-pandemic levels before 2023 at the earliest, Chief Executive Officer Raul Revuelta said on Wednesday. As with its peers, GAP’s operations have been hammered by lockdown measures to contain the virus that has caused the death of more than 1.5 million people worldwide. One of Mexico’s main airport operators, GAP between January and November registered 24.4 million travelers at the 14 hubs it operates in Mexico and Jamaica, barely half of the 48.7 million passengers it logged during all of last year. “We think we won’t see the same number of passengers that we had in 2019 until between 2023 and 2024,” Revuelta told Reuters in an interview. The company based in the western city of Guadalajara aims to issue its first debt of 2021 during the first few months in order to help fund its investment plans, Revuelta said. “Some time around the first quarter we’ll launch our first issue, but we’re still in the preliminary stage of determining more specific amounts and dates,” he added. Last month GAP announced a 20-month delay in its spending plans, which include more than 21 billion pesos ($1.1 billion) worth of outlays at its airports. As a result, it now expects that work to conclude in mid-2026 instead of December 2024. “Yes, we have delays, but in general terms, the big works that we had planned for the different airports will end up going ahead,” Revuelta said. ($1 = 19.8560 Mexican pesos) (Reporting by Noe Torres Editing by Dave Graham and Sandra Maler)