MMAN Airport anniversary - interview with Guillermo Anaya

In my professional life I have the chance to meet people who are becoming good friends, despite the fact that due to the distance I never got the chance to meet them. I guess it is about matching attitude, values, and vision of how to move forward. Guillermo Anaya, Pilot One Editor, is one for good friends in industry. Recently they published a very special magazine edition, dedicated to 80 years of MMAN Airport anniversary. So, I decided to feature this enthusiastic passioned aviation lover and find out more about his way in aviation media.

Q. How you came in aviation? By passion, by chance, by occasion?
A. Since I was a child, I lived in front of an airport and from there the whole subject, I always wanted to fly as a pilot but for work reasons I was more attracted to the subject of media and photography, around. 
In 2004 I contacted pilots at the Aeropuerto del Norte (MMAN) and began to document its history. Since it is a site with a lot of contact with the industrial environment of the city and the great leaders of our country, 
I also began offering marketing for the FBO, MRO and enterprises in there, web, photo, support for events. Later I started the magazine and since then we have been working on it with passion and pleasure in seeing planes, but more than anything to make the stories that happen known.

Q. What is the main role for aviation media, in your opinion?
A. Dispersion of information, definitely, in our country, Mexico, we have a bad image of what aviation is in terms of costs and that it is an activity that is only possible for people with purchasing power when in reality certainly as in there are all different modalities, depending on the resources available. I consider that our job is to spread the opportunities so that more people are in this environment, achieve a profitable way of life and it is also a dynamic activity with a lot of potential for personal development. Aviation, especially business aviation, can attract and greatly improve the improvement of sales and support processes for your company, and not everyone knows this.

Q. We are living amazing time in the industry, when so many new concepts and designs are being presented, what are your favorites?
A. Today's media can present aviation concepts in ways that go beyond photography and we can, with the enormous advantage of streaming media, carry the message that in other times only television channels had. Today with the telephone you can carry out an interview, show it live or edit it and put all kinds of visual supports and documents online so that the reader has the information of the product and service in a rich and even interactive way. Never before it was possible to send a message or start a conversation with the CEO of a company or the technicians of an aircraft or sales executives. 
However, we must be careful not to overdo the technologies and overwhelm the reader, which would be counterproductive. 
For me, I feel that print media is still important and enriched with streaming facilities.

Q. Sustainability in aviation - would you agree that industry is doing big efforts?
A. It is an area of business opportunity for companies that have the technology and procedures to reduce the carbon footprint in the entire ecosystem. It is very important that all actions of ecology and sustainability add up to create clean environments both in airports like the immediate environment. I see efforts in electrical energy, but my personal opinion – this is not the best way, given the power and energy aviation needs. I feel that the industry will go from fossil fuel to hydrogen and the electric will remain only to rather personal or short-haul flight applications.

Q. Can you tell us a bit more about that special magazine edition, dedicated to 80 years of MMAN Airport anniversary
A. We started to work on this about 1 year ago when I started to study the history of MMAN and started to create some enthusiasm about this topic. Unfortunately, when aviation goes from the stage of personal aviation to a corporate type, the environment in an airport goes from being a club of good friends to being a business site because the idea is to serve passengers who see the airport only as a point of departure or arrival. However, analyzing the dynamics of the city of Monterrey, MX, which was considered for a long time the industrial capital of the country, I found 
that much of the development was due to the enormous amount of air operations and the number of aircraft from piston to jets that we had between the 50's and the 70's. In this place we have many of the great brands like Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc, which is currently part of the global Heineken consortium.  Industrialists used business aviation to improve business quality. I think that it is very important that people invest to the best of their ability to improve air mobility, therefore, it is necessary to consider devoting an entire issue to a mental journey through the written stories based on verifiable sources. 
We were supported by American Airlines Museum, CR Smith in Ft. Worth Tx USA since that airline created and built the MMAN in 1942. The city would not have been the same without the support of having this international airport. 
For us, as a media, it was more than important to work on this special issue and story. We had to tell the story of progress made, show why and how it happened, get back to importance of general aviation in MMAN airport and economical arguments.