Spanish pilot’s life changed on joining budget carrier
Print Edition
Mario Alberich Diaz made a quick decision to come to China in 2010 to be a captain with Spring Airlines after he lost his job and had “nothing to lose.” Now the Spanish uncle with a short beard and friendly smile has become the most popular figure at the airline.
Diaz serves as a guide to other foreign pilots from across the world, a mentor to young Chinese co-pilots sitting beside him and an ambassador for the budget airline’s foreign market.
“Wish you a happy marriage,” Diaz said in front of a video camera and repeated in Spanish, which will be broadcast at the wedding of one of his Chinese colleagues late this month.
“Wish you a happy new year.” This time, his greeting was recorded for another video clip to be sent to all 6,000 employees of the nation’s first budget airline.
“Looking back at my decision five years ago, I feel no regret to become a pilot for a Chinese carrier,” Diaz says.
The 41-year-old, one of the most senior foreign captains in China, used to be a pilot with Spainair since 1999. He decided to move to China after his former employer, charter flight carrier Air Comet, went bankrupt in the wake of the economic crisis overwhelming Europe in 2010.
Several days after losing the job, he received a Spring Airlines’ offer from one of his friends. He did a Google search for the carrier that he never heard of at that time.
“Budget carrier doesn’t have a good reputation in Europe. It means bad service and many other problems,” he says. “But since it is the first budget carrier in China and I had nothing to lose, I decided to have a try.”
Diaz packed up and flew to Shanghai. The city gave him a quite good first impression — with friendly people who liked to pose with him and touch his beard, tall buildings and many shops and restaurants.
After he passed the tests and a training program six months later, he took his wife, a former flight attendant with Air Comet who also lost her job, to live near Shanghai’s Hongqiao International Airport.
The airline had only six foreign pilots at that time, but now the number has increased to 72, thanks to the recommendations of Diaz. After getting used to the environment, he recommended many other captains in the former companies to work in Shanghai.
“I told them there is no language barrier because the air controllers also use English, and few cultural barriers in this cosmopolitan city,” he says.
Diaz has helped the company recruit over 70 foreign captains from across Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific. Many others also work for local carriers such as Juneyao and China Eastern Airlines. “At the beginning, most of them were scared to come and work in an unfamiliar country,” he says.
However, Diaz did experience some shocks when he initially came to work in Shanghai, such as the different working methods of the air traffic controllers.
On his third flight from Shanghai to Xi’an in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, Diaz encountered a severe thunderstorm, but when he asked to detour he got a firm “negative” from the air traffic controller.
“At that time, I had to gamble between my license that might be revoked and the safety of all my 180 passengers onboard,” he says.
He finally decided to detour to ensure the flying safety, a decision that was later confirmed by the Chinese military air controller.
Apart from being a pioneer in bringing many foreign captains to fill the severe shortage of experienced pilots in Chinese carriers, Diaz also made himself a mentor to his young co-pilots during flights.
“I would like to tell them why I do this and that rather than make them remember the process,” he explains.
Now, he is highly popular with the company’s hundreds of co-pilots who are keen to learn from his techniques and his ability to operate safely and efficiently in China’s hectic aviation sector.
Diaz also volunteers as Spring Airlines’ international brand ambassador. His uniformed photos have been printed on brochures and on local subways to help promote the carrier’s international image. “My wife loves my portrait on subway,” he smiles.
And he loves himself, too. Diaz recalls a story of his film star-like experience in the Bangkok airport last year.
When he entered the airport, he found everyone was smiling at him, from the passengers to airport security guards and the flight attendants.
“A security check staffer later said to me, ‘I recognize you. You are the pilot on the promotional poster’.”
Diaz later found his portrait in front of the boarding gate and numerous passengers asked to pose with him in front of the poster.
As one of the most senior captains with the airline, Diaz has a busy flying schedule. He flies international flights to Japan and Bangkok and domestic routes across the nation. Normally, he flies five days a week.
Diaz’s favorite route is to fly between Shanghai and Bangkok simply because it is a 4.5-hour flight, longer than most other routes of the carrier.
He also likes flying to Shenyang in northeastern China, especially in summer, because Shanghai’s scorching summer heat remains the only thing that he can hardly get used to.
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