IR Open Mic - 26-02 - Magic Mirror - Juan Jose Salmon (Season 1, Episode 5)

In this IR Open Mic snip-it, Curtis asks Juan José Salmón, Chief Executive Officer of Lima Airport Partners (LAP), the private operator and developer of Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, Peru to share his craziest story from from his varied and intriguing career the airport sector.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We're coming to the end of this, and this is the fun and frivolous part. We've got something called the magic mirror. The mirror part is the mirror on your soul. So we're going to ask you 15 questions. They're meant to be fast, furious, off the top of your head, no hesitation, no filter, but of course, no, no profanity either. So this is a family show. We'll start with uh favorite favorite aircraft, civilian or military, current or historical.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Civilian current 321 XLR. That is the best airport that we can have flying out from Lima, because with that we will reach the full Americas. I'm really looking forward to have a lot of them. Absolutely. No, no, that's a great air.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

That's a great airplane. Apples or oranges, coffee or tea flat or sparkling. That's just kind of a three-parter. So apples or oranges.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I would say apples. Coffee for sure. I start with a very nice espresso and then continue with espresso and go to bed with an espresso. So I like coffee. Yeah, I'd have nightmares if I did that. Flat or sparkling. I would say sparkling.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Okay, good. Well, that was consistent on our dinner that night, too. On the on the preference theme, cats or dogs? Cats for sure. No, sorry, dogs for sure. There's a hesitation there, okay. Scariest animal.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Spiders?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah. Yeah, some of those can be nasty. I don't I don't know why you'd live in Australia. There's too many things there that can kill you.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

And I'm going to Australia to visit my son. He's living there. And he's keep on sending me pictures of very nasty and big spiders all over. So I don't know when when to do a wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

When the spiders are bigger than your guinea pigs in Peru, that tells you something. So for sure. Here's one I love to ask. Famous person, living or dead, you'd like to have dinner with?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Uh I'm actually reading a book of him. He's uh José Saramau. He's a Portuguese author. He's uh he won a Nobel Prize some time ago. And he has extraordinary novels. And the subjects and the topics that he chose to present to sometimes people in these race, but you can also take them back to what is happening here from a social point of view. It's amazing. It's really incredible.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

I don't know if you're a car guy, but what about uh your favorite classic car?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

I would say uh Mustang. Yeah, shall we?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Shall we one of the old ones or one of the one of the old ones? The old ones.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

No, that you know the new car with all those touch screens and no buttons, no, no gear, no gearbox. I I I really they look very nice, but they are not that nice to drive.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

You might as well be driving a Tesla, right? So okay, greatest fear.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Not being here for my for my children.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah, that's a natural one, right? So well, let's live a good life and not be such crazy people like our parents. I know my my father lived a tougher life than I did, so maybe if we live right, we we live longer too, right? Yeah, that's correct.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

My favorite dessert. It's a Peruvian uh dessert, which is um uh Chiimoya. I know it's I don't know how to say in English.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Our our editor's wife is is Mexican, so she'll help him with the translation. We're we're good. Right, great. Uh earliest memory.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Sunday breakfast with my grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Oh, and he used to take you to a nice restaurant somewhere, or no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

He was always coming home uh Sunday's morning, like 6 a.m. in the morning. He's he parked his car outside a house, and he came with warm bread, ham, and some other Peruvian stuff. And he was waiting there uh with reading his newspaper. And from that time I learned to woke up every Sunday very early because I was the one opening the door to him. It was really nice, nice memories.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah, it's always nice when he comes with goodies in hands. That's great. Yeah, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yeah, that's right. Now to the modern age, most used app on your phone, excluding WhatsApp or Outlook.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

I'm using a lot of X, not because I like this hate kind of news, but because I also found very interesting articles and and and and very actual news going around. So I I am always looking what's happening.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

It's like having a full world on your fingers.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

There's some great apps out there now, too, that that rather than filtering the news, they'll give you the the sort of give you the range, like it they give you five different articles in the same issue from left, center, and middle perspective. And yeah, and they're they're quite good because then you can consume and and see what everybody's seeing and thinking across the spectrum as well. So yeah. Okay, favorite movie of all time.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Dead Boy Society.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Okay, I like that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. And if you had one song to listen to for the rest of your life and there was only one, and that this is again a very tricky one, but what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

There is one from the Beatles, which is called A Little Help from a friends.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Exactly. That's almost like uh words for life as well. So yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

So you know it there you know that you cannot do things alone.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

So this is the other impossible question I'm asking, and actually, one person has got it right in the first four podcasts, which is almost unbelievable. What number am I thinking of between one and a hundred? And it has some relevance to what we talked about in this interview.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

I would say 25.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Oh, now we're on to number two. You're right, you got it. 25 million passengers. Well done. Well done. Okay, getting close to the end of this now. Uh, favorite place you visited and the top bucket list of the place you want to see before you don't have a chance to see it.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Federal place has been for sure a trip I took to Myanmar, Birmania. Okay. I stayed there with my wife for about 10 to a day, going to Alta temples. Really nice, nice people, nice locations, excellent service. Really, really, I really like it a lot. Uh, back at least, I would say somewhere in Africa. I have not been in Africa yet.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah, I've I've been to Egypt, uh that's about the extent of it. I would I would love to explore. There's we're doing a lot of work there these days. I guess Seychelles is technically Africa, but it's it's an island out in the Indian Ocean. But yeah, Ethiopia, uh Namibia, a number of those places would be quite fascinating. The the the real the real challenge is it there's never enough time to see everything you want to see, right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, the roundup question here: your personal mantra in 10 words or less.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

I always try to avoid referring to using the world problem. I'd rather change it to challenge, uh, opportunities, uh, tasks. So to put it differently, I I I don't like to have uh some sort of negative connotation. I rather think that things are there to overcome them, to use the best out of you and to uh and take the best out of your team to override any challenge and to perform in any tasks that we can have in the future, you know. Life is full with uh opportunities, and when you take them and take the best out of them.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

You know, and that's when I was in the site management business all those years, it one of the things that I kind of took on was if I only talk to you when there's a problem, that's a problem. So whether it's the airlines, customs, whoever the stakeholder is, if the only time you're ever talking is when there are there's a problem, you're never gonna have a good relationship. So make the point of having conversations when there isn't a crisis, right? Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Yeah, absolutely. That's correct. Well, again, those are those are good words to live by. And I appreciate you spending some time with us here and sharing uh your insights, both personal and professional. And look forward to seeing you in Lima and maybe even sooner, but certainly no later than this fall when we get together for the ACI conference. Thanks again.