This episode is presented by FEMPA, the Mexican Federation of Pilots and Aircraft Owners. Learn more at alfa.fempa.mx.
Okay. If I learn technically how to fly, what world opens up to me? All of human progress depends on a curious person who wanted to say, 'Why can't this be different? What if we do things another way?' People think it's impossible, that only birds can fly. What can be done?
Daniel Vogel is co-founder and CEO of Bitso, one of the leading fintech companies in Latin America. He holds two degrees from Stanford in economics and computer science, plus an MBA from Harvard University. And well, Bitso started in a small office with a desk and three people, and then we grew it.
But on this occasion, we're not going to talk about cryptocurrencies. We're going to get to know Daniel from another perspective: that of a pilot. His passion for aviation has accompanied him for years and is part of an industry that, for him, represents more than just flying.
Flying changes the way we see the world. It has changed the way I see Mexico. And for me, aviation is that—it's the opportunity to have something you can study for a lifetime, because I believe you never finish learning it. You never finish.
Since I came back to Mexico, I tried to validate my license. I had a very sad experience there because behind the businessman, there is also a pilot. And today, Daniel also brings his passion through FEMPA to give a voice to general aviation in Mexico.
If you can improve the operational certainty of general aviation in the country, which is the number one thing pilots in Mexico struggle with today—it's the lack of operational certainty.
So fasten your seatbelts and welcome to a new episode of Before Takeoff Podcast.
Because aviation is connectivity, aviation is industry, aviation is tourism, it's jobs, it's community like this community.
Thank you very much, Luis. I'm really excited to be here at the Toluca airport. So if you happen to hear some planes passing by, it's because we're doing exactly what needs to be done before takeoff. So thank you for having me here, and I'm very excited for this conversation.
Thank you for the opportunity. And well, talking a little, you attended two very important universities in the United States, Stanford and Harvard. You got an MBA, but tell me, what did you learn in the cockpit of a plane that you didn't learn at these universities?
Yes, thank you very much. Look, I became a pilot between my undergraduate and master's degrees. I was basically living in San Francisco and had the opportunity to take a class, and I fell in love immediately. Before that, planes had always caught my attention, like any child, I think, but I had never had a real interest in learning to fly. And after taking that class, I said, 'Okay, this is something I absolutely have to do.' And I got my license. And it has truly been something that has accompanied me a lot in life, obviously inside the cockpit, but also a lot outside of it. I think there are many things I'm always thinking about when I'm running my business, even in my personal relationships, where I make many analogies with what I learned flying. One of the things I think about most is, I remember when I started learning to fly, the instructor would say to me, 'Hey, don't let the plane get ahead of you.' It was a phrase he used in English, 'Don't let the plane get ahead of you.' And what he meant was that we did many short flights between two airports that were very close, so you would take off and obviously there are many things you have to do, you have to be checking your lists, making sure everything is operating correctly, and then you would reach your cruising altitude and it seemed like you could relax. But if you relaxed, it was a problem because you would lose focus, and when it was time to land, you didn't have the plane configured, you didn't have the frequencies. So there was this issue where if you relaxed and weren't very conscious of what the next thing I need to do is, the plane would get ahead of you, and you would risk the operation. And I think about that a lot when I'm running the business, when I suddenly feel that things are calm and I say, 'Well, right now everything is fine.' I always say, 'No, wait, what is the next thing I need to be thinking about? What is the next thing I need to be thinking about so that the plane doesn't get ahead of me?'
And like that, I think there are many things. For example, the whole issue of lists and checklists is very important to me, and I do checklists all the time and try to structure my day, both professionally and personally, thinking about what are the best lessons I can use from the cockpit and bring to my daily life. Another thing they teach you a lot in aviation is, hey, if you don't know, don't assume, right? Because if you assume, that can be very dangerous. And I tell people at the company: if someone asks you something and you don't know, I'd rather you tell me, 'I don't know and I'm going to investigate, I'm going to find out,' than make something up. Because if you make something up in a meeting, people might leave that meeting thinking many things, assuming that what this person said comes from a point of deep information and context, and then you act with that information, and if that context was incorrect, well, you end up in a problem. And sometimes it's hard, right? It's happened to all of us that an authority or someone in a forum asks us a question, and you don't want to look bad, so you make something up or you halfway remember the data and sort of say it. But it's very dangerous. That's very dangerous in the cockpit. 'Hey, how much fuel do we have?' 'No, the tanks are full.' 'What? Boss, didn't you check and tell me the tanks were full?' No, that's a very dangerous thing. But the same in business and also in relationships, right? In relationships, one of the things I think about a lot with my family and my children is always trying to understand what conversations we need to have to ensure our relationship keeps growing and stays positive. That's something I also learned in flying. 'Hey, you know what? I'm seeing something in this approach that I don't like. There's something here I don't like, and I'm going to mention it.' Because if I keep it to myself and that problem gets bigger... If I mention it, we can discuss it, understand it, and decide what plan we're going to take to solve it. And in relationships, it's the same. Sometimes when we don't have a conversation about something that's bothering us or something that's off track, the worst thing you can do is keep it to yourself. Right. If you talk about it and open the discussion, you usually have a better probability of solving it than if you keep it all inside.
So I could spend 45 minutes or an hour here talking to you about lessons I've learned in the cockpit that I try to bring to my life. Those are things I learned in the cockpit, not at Stanford or Harvard, but they have been very, very valuable lessons that I carry with me and try to act on every day.
You've talked about solutions, factors, risks in the cockpit as in business life that you apply. Clearly, you have to know how to manage them because that's very important. In the plane, as you mentioned, in your company, in your field, there are many actors—social, commercial, skeptical—that you have to deal with, and clearly, as you say, flying has given you those tools.
Daniel, let me ask you clearly. When you were little, you're a very curious person, and curiosity has led you to achieve great things. I did a little research on you and found that you studied in Germany as a child and used to bike everywhere, finding that freedom. That reminds me a lot of the Wright brothers, as you know, they started in a bicycle shop, started to explore a bit, and felt that freedom. Did you ever feel that those trips, those experiences gave you that freedom to explore a bit more about what you wanted to do in your life?
Yes, that's a great question. I think I owe my curiosity really to my parents. My parents are two people who have always instilled in us, I think, a passion, a love for learning. I think that was one of the most important values they always... since we were little, the whole education part, learning, is very important, but also combined, I would say, with a part that has always been very important to me, which is that, wow, sometimes we look at the world around us and say, 'Wow, this is incredible, right?' Here we are sitting at an airport, I'm looking at a plane here, and everything that humanity had to achieve to have these magnificent machines that launch us into the air, right? But one of the things we have to remember, I think, is that all of that started with curiosity, okay? Everything starts. All of human progress depends on a curious person who wanted to say, 'Why can't this be different? What if we do things another way?' People think it's impossible, that only birds can fly. What can be done?' And I think that curiosity is what leads people to build things, it's what leads people to educate themselves, study, invent, discover. And so I would say that yes, the freedom part is very important, but I think that curiosity comes more from a point of view of saying everything around us was built by someone like us. That's right. I mean, everything you see around you, this sofa, someone designed it. Someone like you and me. Maybe someone who had a bit more of an eye for design or for many things that maybe you and I didn't study, but it was someone like you and me. That's right. And so we shouldn't forget that when we sometimes see and complain about how the world is or that something is wrong or whatever, well, it depends on someone like us to say, well, these rules, these concepts, these materials, this was made by someone who isn't very different from you and me. And so we have to sit down and figure out how we change it, how we improve it. And I think it's, well, I'm maybe getting ahead of myself, but I think that's one of the things that led me to take on FEMPA and say, 'Let's do something with FEMPA,' right? Because I saw pilots complaining about the rules, people saying this is too cumbersome or this isn't working or this and that, and yes, but well, who's going to change it? Boss. That's right. If you just sit there saying, well, I'm going to dedicate my life to complaining, well, nothing is going to happen. You're going to complain and live bitterly, and maybe the people around you will say, 'He's a bitter or whiny person.' Of course, sometimes we have to complain, but we have to complain from the point of view of also wanting to be constructive and say, 'What are we going to change? How are we going to change it?' instead of just investing that energy in complaining. Let's document, let's write, let's make it known. And I think that curiosity can lead to discovery, innovation, new things, but I think that same curiosity also has to be a motor to be constructive and change the world, not just say, 'Hey, well, I've imagined a freer, cooler, more open aviation that generates many economic opportunities for the country and grows tourism and creates connectivity and all these things, but I'm going to stay home imagining it,' right? At some point, you have to grab it and say, 'Well, okay, as Chicharito said, imagining things is great, but let's execute them.' Right. If we don't execute them, well, that change doesn't happen, right?
It doesn't happen. Before touching on that topic, yes, sorry, I got ahead of myself.
No, don't worry, it's very good because we're just going to that point and how you started, you know? Because now you're taking on a very important baton that we're going to talk about, but how was that approach to aviation really, where you said, 'I want to fly, I mean, I want to take the controls of a plane'?
Look, I studied at Stanford, I graduated, and I stayed working near the university, about an hour away in San Francisco, at a tech company. And I was single, no children, very fortunate, a great job, and I had a huge project that I had to deliver to the CEO of the company. It was typical of those projects where you more or less imagine what you have to do. Well, I was a bit lazy, I had a ton of other things, I hadn't prioritized it. And it was a weekend in January, my friends were going skiing to Lake Tahoe, which is about four hours from San Francisco, and I hadn't done my work, so I couldn't go, I had to stay because I had to deliver the project. So this weekend I was going to have to work because I had been procrastinating, right? I sat down on Friday, I got comfortable. At that company, they liked to do something called Beer Fridays, where a guy with a cart full of beers would come by on Fridays, you'd grab one, and stay there drinking, chatting, working, whatever. I grabbed my beer and started working on this thing, and this thing I had imagined would be a huge amount of work ended up being a very quick analysis, and I finished it. I called my friends and said, 'Hey, pick me up at the office and I'll go skiing with you.' No, we're already way too far. Oh well. Okay, then never mind. And I stayed alone in my house in San Francisco, all my friends out, and I literally looked for fun things to do around there. And it was a time when a company called Groupon was very big, and there was a Groupon that said, 'Learn to fly for 50.' And I said, 'That sounds interesting.' I bought it, called, they said, 'Come tomorrow.' And I went on a Sunday with no expectations, just saying, 'Well, it's what's going to kill my boredom.' And I got into a Piper, a Warrior, okay? Like from 1975, something like that.
Was it your first Discovery Flight?
Something like that. It was a Discovery Flight, but I remember it perfectly. It was a beautiful day, and the airport was packed. We took off from an airport called San Carlos, south of San Francisco airport. And I remember we were waiting, waiting, waiting, and the guy was complaining. I was happy, I was looking at, 'What is this? The altimeter, what is this? The tachometer, what is this? The pressure?' Just learning, right? Yes. Asking, asking, and learning, fascinated. I didn't even realize we were there waiting. I later flew a lot from that airport, and yes, that was an unusually busy day. But anyway, the point is that we finally got cleared for takeoff, and the guy says to me, 'Look, here with the lever, the Piper has it down here on the right, you're going to go all the way to the end, the plane is going to start taking off.' I wasn't really looking at the pedals yet, I hadn't really used them much for taxiing, but not for takeoff, he said, 'Put your feet on the floor there.' Anyway, power, he says, 'Now pull it, pull it more, a little more, leave it.' And in that second of feeling us lift off and how the world starts to get small, I mean, the earth starts to get small. And that feeling of going into the air, it was something I had never felt, and it was, I would say, love at first sight.
I was exactly 24 years old, about to turn 25.
Which for you was something different, something exciting.
As you were saying, you were asking, learning more, and unlike many people, you did it in a Piper. You know, many start in a Cessna 152, a 172, and you did it in a different plane, right?
Yes. And the very cool part was that it was at a flying club, okay? In the United States, it's called the West Valley Flying Club, and it was full of pilots who were going places or coming back from places. So I was just listening to this guy who had gone to Lake Tahoe and was coming back, and another who had gone to Los Angeles, and another who was going to a place called Shelter Cove. And it was also very intriguing, right? You saw people with their girlfriends, their wives, their kids getting into the planes, and it was truly exciting to see all that movement, right? It was a club, it still is a club, and they must have had like 40 or 50 planes, so there was a lot of movement, and that part was also like aviation opened up a world that wasn't available to those who didn't fly. That's right. And that part was also very exciting, like saying, 'Wow, if I do this and get a license, I could be one of those people too and be able to go with my family on a trip like that, which is something I do a lot now and is one of my biggest passions.' But all that part, the feeling of flying, understanding there was a world I could discover that could open up to me where there was a lot to learn, which for me, as I told you, this part of learning is something I've had since I was very young and really attracts me. And then, okay, if I learn technically how to fly, what world opens up to me? What world? And so I got comfortable, went home, and I have a very good friend, we're still very good friends, George Nelson, who flew, he was famous among our group of friends because he was a pilot. So what did I do? I called him, 'George, tell me about this. I know you fly, I've never flown with you, I've never flown in a small plane, I just did it, tell me.' And he started telling me how it works, how it is, and the truth is it really got me excited. And yes, I got my license and then flew for a year only on visual flight rules, and then I got my instrument rating, and I've kept studying. And for me, aviation is that—the opportunity to have something you can study for a lifetime, because I believe you never finish, you never finish, right?
And well, you kept studying, the passion kept growing. And tell me, there came a point when you decided to acquire an aircraft. You could have gotten any, right? Maybe a Piper, which was the first plane you flew, but you got a Cirrus. How was that process and that passion that led you to acquire that type of aircraft? And precisely for what you wanted and what inspired you about flying with the family—you saw many people doing connecting flights, I mean, how was that decision?
It was very difficult, I mean, it was very difficult. It was a process of talking to a lot of people. That's the beauty of aviation, you get to know a lot of people and you support each other, it's a very beautiful community, right? Yes. So, yes, talking to a lot of people, I went and tried many planes. Okay. I had the opportunity, and every time I had the opportunity, I would go and get in a plane and fly it, and I flew all types of planes. Many conversations with my wife. Okay. Was I already married? Yes, at that time, yes. When I bought my first plane, I was married and had two children. I also have a European license, my wife is German, so I got my license in Austria. And the summer before buying my own aircraft, I was flying with the kids for the first time. I got someone to lend me another Piper, and we flew around Europe. We went to France, to several airports in Germany, etc. I also flew in Austria, to the Czech Republic, I flew a bit there. And for me, it was a question of whether this was something I was going to be able to enjoy as a family. I didn't know if my kids would be scared, if they would get motion sick. My wife and I have a very beautiful story with aviation too. The second time I went out with my wife, we went flying. We took a flight together and we talked a lot about it because she didn't know me well, but she had the courage to... You had to do that to see if you could be with her. Exactly. It was an important part. And then our honeymoon, in fact, was in a Cessna 172, and we bounced around to many airports in the southwestern United States. Yes. So my wife had always loved aviation. So with her, there wasn't much question, but it was a question about my kids. They were little then, they were two and four at the time. So, is this realistic or not? Did you share that passion for aviation with her, or did she already have a certain interest?
My wife has never been very interested in the learning part, but she has always been very interested in and really enjoyed with me the part of flying to places, discovering things, planning trips, etc. So that part, yes, always, but really not the technical part of flying. What is true is that my kids love it. They're still little, now they're four and six, but in the last two years that we've had the plane, it really catches their attention. They ask, 'What is this? What is that? How does it work?' They help me plan the trips. The truth is, it's something I really enjoy with them.
With them, right? And the choice of the Cirrus was very difficult. Sure, because one of the things I enjoy most when I fly is just seeing the landscapes, going up, feeling, and the Cirrus is a machine for making trips, right? And I had never had a machine like that, but I did have the opportunity to fly it a lot before making the purchase decision. And one of the things I also realized is that in Mexico today we don't have that much infrastructure yet. In fact, rather than saying 'yet,' unfortunately what I've seen is that we've eroded a lot of the existing infrastructure in terms of aerodromes and airports in the country. And looking at the distances, I started to realize that in a country like Mexico, it could be important to have a machine that could help me reach slightly longer distances. Sure. I think you can have any aircraft in Mexico, and I've met a lot of people now who are more involved in this world in Mexico, who enjoy aircraft that are very different, of all types, from people who have planes that are smaller and slower than a Cirrus to people who have larger and faster planes than a Cirrus. So I think at the end of the day, it's a lot about the mission you're trying to carry out. And for me, one of the things I have realized is that I really enjoy traveling in the plane with my family. And one of the things that was very important when I was talking with my wife was the parachute in the Cirrus. My wife felt a lot of peace knowing that if at any moment I had an issue or the plane had an issue, there was a parachute that could be used. So, in the end, that was it. But there isn't a day that goes by where I don't open a magazine, a blog, something and say, 'Wow, what would a Cub be like? What would this be like?' Now, and these planes, the Scalewings, I don't know if you've seen them... No, I haven't seen them. It's basically a P-51 to scale, smaller, but awesome. And I don't know, all the time, and also bigger planes. Then what would a Pilatus be like, what would an Epic 1000 be like? I mean, I think once you get into this world, there isn't a day you stop dreaming. But today I'm happy with the Cirrus, very happy. It has taken us to many places, and I've really enjoyed it.
And every day, well, new equipment keeps coming out, technology keeps increasing. In the Cirrus, clearly today it's a very safe plane, and as they say, I think wives buy that plane clearly for the safety, right? The parachute, and now the Autoland that the new ones already have integrated. Yes, mine doesn't have Autoland, but the parachute was definitely a very important part for my wife. And I've talked to many wives of friends, of pilots, who, I've heard them say, 'I won't get in one that doesn't have a parachute, or I won't get in.' So, yes, obviously once you get married, decisions have to be made as a family, and so that part is important.
It is important. Hey, all this passion, well, when you were at Harvard, you were also in a piloting club. We were talking that you were also Chief Pilot in that part. Tell me a little about that stage, how was it there to be part of that?
Yes. Yes. So, after I finished working in San Francisco, I went to Boston. I already had my instruments, and I went to live in Boston. And as I told you, aviation is a permanent school. So, now the things I hadn't been able to do when I lived in San Francisco were, for example, very low-temperature operations, right? Because I have photos driving to the airport where we were at -30 degrees Celsius. That's crazy. I mean, it's crazy. So there you have to take care of the machine in a very different way, preheat the engine, there are many things you have to do, right? So, I really enjoyed it. There I had the opportunity to fly my first turboprop. I flew a Piper Meridian. It was the first time I also flew a Cirrus. But one of the things I've liked is learning. So I flew many different types, many planes, many planes. And one of the things that was very cool is that you can fly over Harvard University and you can fly all around the city of Boston. Okay. And there's something they call the Boston City Tour, the tour of the city of Boston, which you do from above, and you can see Fenway Park, where the Red Sox play. So there are many cool things to see, and it was a flight I loved doing, and I loved doing it with friends. So I did that flight many, many times. And then there are several very cool places to go around there. There's Martha's Vineyard, there's Nantucket, there's New York, there are many places to go, there's Maine, there's Bar Harbor, there's a national park called Acadia, where the views are incredible, and you can fly between the two mountains, I mean, it's a joy to fly, it's a joy to fly. But well, now that I talk about that, it hasn't been that long, and I remember, and I really... And so, Harvard Business School has a whole series of student clubs, and one of the clubs that existed was the Aviation and Aerospace Club. So I joined the first year out of curiosity to understand what this is, and then when you're in your second year of your master's, well, someone needs to run the club. So I joined to run the club as Chief Pilot, and it was super fun because we organized visits to towers, and it opens many doors, right? When you call a place and say, 'Hey, I'm the Chief Pilot of the Aviation Club at Harvard Business School, and I want to organize a tour of the control tower at Logan, Boston's airport. When could we go? Oh, and by the way, we have international students, but I had a visa, and some of these things are protected by national security only for American citizens. But when you talk and say, 'I'm from Harvard University,' which is true, they open many doors for you. 'Well, look, you have to do this and this and that.' So we went to see the control centers, incredible, and see because as a pilot, you learn how you're passed from one center to another and you understand a little, but it's very different when you're seeing it, when you're seeing how the system works, the old systems, the new systems, what a controller is really seeing when they're giving you instructions. It gives you a lot. Again, aviation is an opportunity to keep learning. So it was awesome. We organized many trips, and then we had the opportunity to get a small grant from the university, a subsidy, to carry out a bit of research. So it was really, really cool, and again, I did it out of this passion I have for aviation. And I met my now-wife in Boston. So also when I think about these trips, I obviously remember that first stage of going out with a lot of enthusiasm, nostalgia, and happiness from nostalgia and happiness because they were trips and opportunities we had to get to know many aerodromes and airports around there and to enjoy this passion for aviation.
This passion, and I imagine, well, a lot of community, a lot of community in that part, a lot of support. Well, moving on to this topic we're going to talk about a bit, general aviation in Mexico today is going through complicated moments, but let me ask you, after all that experience you had in the United States, in Europe, flying, meeting people, how is aviation very different? What made you look at Mexico and why, well, take on this baton that you're doing today with FEMPA, which is the Mexican Federation of Pilots and Aircraft Owners in Mexico?
Yes, I mean, since I went to the United States to study, it was always very clear to me that I wanted to come back to Mexico to build a business in Mexico or do something for the country, do something in the country. The truth is, I feel very fortunate for the opportunities I've had as a person in my life, and I wanted to build back in Mexico, right? So I came back, started Bitso, and Bitso started in a small office with a desk and three people, and then we grew it. In 2014, right? In 2014, exactly. And well, the truth is, since I came back to Mexico, I tried to validate my license. I had a very sad experience there where I had to abandon that process because after doing my theory hours, my flight hours, my exams, my medical exams, I did everything. When I went to literally pick up my license, they asked me for a bribe of 60,000 pesos, and I wasn't willing to pay it. The then director of licenses of the then DGAC told me I needed to pay him 60,000 pesos to have my license. I wasn't willing to do it, I didn't get my license, and I was very busy with the business, running the business. So I focused a lot on that. Every time I went to the United States, I would fly, I would rent a plane and fly it. And it wasn't until two and a half years ago that a very good...
A friend of mine who is also a pilot and with whom we share that passion, Rafael Moreno, a Mexican, gifted me a trip from Atizapán to fly over the pyramids of Teotihuacán. Awesome, right? The pilot who took me on that trip, I told him I was a pilot, we took the trip and I said, I have to do this, I can't just be flying when I'm in the United States.
And that led to everything I've already told you, like flying in Europe with my kids, deciding to buy the plane. I started flying in Mexico, and the experience of flying in Mexico is very different from the United States, right? There's a lot more paperwork, but one of the things I started to realize is that there's a big difference between what the authority wants to do and what it's actually achieving in the field, and that there's a lack of... or rather, an opportunity to collaborate more closely with the authority, right? So, I'll give you examples. When I go to the DGAC and talk with the Director General of the DGAC and all the executive directors, one thing that is very clear to me is that there is a very great interest and a very great commitment to trying to improve air safety. I would say that is the biggest priority of the AFAC today, at least every time I ask, that's what everyone tells me. Air safety is the number one priority.
But then when they implement the rules, when you see them on paper, you say, 'Well, these rules, yes, these rules should increase air safety, right?' I'll give you a common rule: I'm going to make sure that all pilots and all aircraft are in compliance before flying. That makes sense, right? If you do that, if all aircraft and all pilots are in compliance, the skies should be safer.
But when you see it in the field, what does that translate to? Sometimes it translates to you waiting 2 hours for them to clear a flight plan, to do all these checks. That has a whole series of implications. It has implications. The weather changes. Right now we're in summer, we know that in the afternoons in Mexico City and in the entire central valley of the country there is convective activity in the afternoons.
And more than the Central Valley, really right now there is convective activity in the afternoons in a large part of the Republic, and those 2-hour delays translate into more risk.
When you're a pilot trying to close an operation, to get an operation authorized, and they put obstacles in your way, and sometimes the truth is that inspectors ask you for things that aren't in any regulation, aren't in any circular.
But it has become the practice to ask for them.
That causes stress for the pilot.
The pilot has to be focused on the operation they are carrying out. You want a pilot to be thinking about the weather. You want a pilot to be thinking about the temperature, about whether the runway is long enough, whether the density altitude is within what that aircraft requires. You want them to be thinking about the route they're taking, where they're going to land. You want the pilot to be focused on safety, not on a procedure?
That's right. No, there has to be a much better way for the pilot's mind to be focused on the important part, which is the operation they are going to carry out, and not be fighting with the inspector who is asking for a document that isn't required.
Not having to be nervous about the weather because they won't authorize the clearance because we're waiting for the central office to see something, or suddenly they arrive and say, 'Oh, I'm not going to take this document anymore, which I used to take.' And one of the things I've heard over and over again in general aviation in the country is that each commandancy is its own universe, and I would say that even each inspector is their own universe. Here, I fly a lot from Toluca, and the difference in criteria that inspectors have for each procedure you want to do is incredible. That is a problem. It's a problem that translates into less safety in Mexican airspace, and that is something that unfortunately the directorates sitting in the central offices of AFAC, with very good intentions, put these processes in place, but when they are not in the field, they can't see how this is translating.
And by not having mechanisms to report what is happening, by not having clear mechanisms through which we can pass that information back to the AFAC, there is no feedback, and that is a huge problem that exists in aviation in the country today. And one of the things I want FEMPA to do... when I started flying in Mexico, I didn't know FEMPA.
I got involved with FEMPA because one of the first things I wanted to do when I started flying in Mexico was to get to know the country's aerodromes.
And I went to fly to several beautiful aerodromes in the country. And suddenly, about a year and a half ago, a little more, yes, a year and a half ago, this rule comes in that says that private airports can only be used by the permit holder and the aircraft registered to that permit holder.
