Valen Iricibar 
In speeches with a distinct electoral slant, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Economy Minister Sergio Massa appeared together at the launch of a pilot-training simulator by the national airline Aerolíneas Argentinas in Ezeiza.
The aims of the event were twofold — to celebrate the simulator, the first of its kind in South America, and to mark the 15th anniversary of the airline’s nationalization.
“I want to go back to what we defend when we defend Aerolíneas. We defend investment with inclusion, the professionalism and labor of Argentina’s aeronautical industry, the connectivity in the eighth largest territory in the world, and ultimately our sovereignty,” said Massa, who is also the presidential candidate for ruling coalition Unión por la Patria (UxP).
The simulator in question is for Boeing 737 Max aircraft training and according to Aerolíneas will save the state USD$7 million a year. By not having to send Argentine pilots abroad — and replace them in the meantime — the other three simulators at Ezeiza’s center for training pilots, Cefepra, saved USD$25 million in 2022. Photos and footage of the vice president and the economy minister sitting in the new simulator prior to the speeches were broadcast during the event. They were joined by Interior Minister Eduardo De Pedro, who is also Massa’s campaign manager.
“It’s important to defend the nationalization of Aerolíneas, which in 2008 was in a calamitous state, they were years of intense fighting by workers to defend it from being emptied by private companies,” said Pablo Ceriani, director of the national airline. He highlighted its contribution to the National Treasury, saying that the airline saw its lowest level of losses last year, USD$246 million.
“Encouraging receptive tourism is fundamental and that’s why we’ve developed a network of direct flights to provinces from international destinations, we’re leaders in bringing foreign tourists to the snow,” Ceriani said. “This winter season has been absolutely record-breaking, we’re transporting between 43 and 44,000 passengers every day, and that development of tourism is fundamental to being more foreign currency to the country.”
Aerolíneas Argentinas was founded in 1950 and privatized in the 1990s under former President Carlos Saúl Menem. It was privatized during Kirchner’s first term as president in 2008 — she also told the audience that the state of the company was “calamitous” to the point where “the state was paying for workers’ salaries and fuel for a private company.”
“It wasn’t an ideological decision but a pragmatic one of economic policy,” she said. “When I hear that they want to privatize — they already did that and it was horrible, ruinous for the country and Argentine connectivity.”
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“Someone should invent a presidential simulator”
Ceriani, Massa, and Kirchner all used the nationalization of Aerolíneas Argentinas 15 years ago as a springboard for talking about this year’s elections and criticizing the opposition, with the primaries being weeks away. Ceriani first described the privatization of Aerolíneas as the opposition’s “war horse.”
“The treasury would have fewer resources and it would be catastrophic, leaving provinces disconnected,” he said, mentioning that some provinces are only served by the airline.
Massa then criticized Buenos Aires City Mayor and opposition presidential candidate Horacio Rodríguez Larreta without naming him.
“I heard the current [mayor on the radio] saying that citizens of outer Buenos Aires are paying for other people’s flights to Rome when they buy milk,” Massa said. “What I ask is for us to at least be serious and rigorous with numbers.”
”Not only has not a single citizen of outer Buenos Aires paid for anyone’s flight to Rome but many who did pay for that flight helped us, for example, to have a flat tariff system to increase the volume of flights to Catamarca province which is currently enjoying record tourism.”
Kirchner and Massa also showcased unity with friendly back and forth during her speech. She addressed the minister and supported his critique, saying that Argentine media is most concerned with the publication of the country’s rates of poverty and inflation.
“Someone should urgently invent a presidential simulator and input Argentina’s numbers and problems, not those of Switzerland or Sweden or Norway,” she said. “A lot of the time in Argentina we pretend that inflation or the IMF and the debt are natural phenomena. They’re not, they are things that have been elicited and have been brought here.”
She contended that the focus should be on the Argentine wealthy with the upper echelons of the business, syndicate, and social community “taking responsibility” for having millions of dollars abroad, citing a report from the National Institute for Statistics and Census (INDEC). Massa cut in to say that he would be a “happy man.”
It’s the third event in which Kirchner has shown her explicit support for Massa’s candidacy — the first was the repatriation of the dictatorship-era “death flight” airplane and the second, the inauguration of the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline.
President Alberto Fernández is currently at a CELAC summit in Brussels and could not attend.
