Enrique Piñeyro: "Going by plane is safer than being on land"

My goal tonight is to take away your fear of flying.” With this phrase in Catalan, which he rehearsed during the interview with La Vanguardia, the Italo-Argentine pilot Enrique Piñeyro will greet the audience at Teatro Victòria this Friday, in his show Flying is human, landing is divine. For one night only, the philanthropic pilot will tell the Barcelona public about the benefits of aviation.

“The show is a comparison of what we do on the planes and what we do on the ground, which is a bit ridiculous,” says Piñeyro. “Why do we put up very dangerous curve signs? If it is dangerous, it has to be changed and it stops being so. No one would land on a runway that says it is very dangerous; He would go elsewhere.”

Piñeyro assures that in his show he removes the public’s fear of flying, “but they leave terrified of all the dangers they run in the rest of the things they do in their lives.” The pilot points to the film industry for this unfounded fear: “Disaster movies are made with planes and sharks that don’t kill anyone.”

And for this, it provides data: “In 2017, 4,000 million passengers flew on 38 million flights and no one died on an airline plane. And that same year, 256 people died hunting Pokémon on the street.

“The perception of danger is very poorly managed,” he continues. It is dangerous to be at home: electrocutions, falls and burns kill 700,000 people each year. Mosquitoes kill a million, cars a million and a half.

The pilot defends that if the safety of the plane, with its double checks and the management of the work group, were applied to what humans do on the ground, “the world would be a much more peaceful place.”

Piñeyro confesses that at the age of 3 he already wanted to be a pilot, but also an actor, and this show, with large screens and a full-scale cabin on stage, allows him to combine his two passions. “I started by commenting on a documentary I made, and the discussion part, a kind of stand-up, lasted as long as the screening. So it occurred to me to put on this show, ”he declares. “The two immemorial ambitions of man were to fly and to be immortal, and in the cockpit you can see the euphoria of having managed to fly.”

Flying is human, landing is divine is a distraction that is allowed in his life dedicated to philanthropy, directing the NGOs Solidarie and Innocence Project Argentina, and collaborating with organizations such as Open Arms, from whom he bought a boat, or flying his own plane, a Boeing 787, for humanitarian purposes.

“I chose my grandfather very well and learned to invest. By being able to accumulate money infinitely, which is what the capitalist system allows you, there comes a time when you wonder why this is allowed to happen if there are deficiencies elsewhere, and many are generated to allow this accumulation. Europe exploited Africa for centuries, left and then does not take charge of the migratory wave: the Mediterranean has become a common grave and there are 16 migratory foci in the world. It was when, from that disruptive capitalism, I decided to use those objects, like an airplane or a ship, so that they serve something and have a social impact to help people who need it ”, he concludes.