An Extraordinary Person

Antonio “Michael” Martín Lozano, is the World’s Only “Earthflight” Pilot

 

"My name is Antonio Martín Lozano, but everyone calls me Michael. I’m the central character of the short documentary “Michael’s Flight”, about the things I do every day, which, according to the people watching, are difficult and special, which makes me an extraordinary person. And I love to hear it, because it’s true. Although I have a mental disability, I can do them better than anyone. In the Envera organisation, we say that everyone can be the best at something; and in my case this has been proved.

In the first place, you are looking at the only “earthflight” pilot in the entire world, with more than 20,000 hours of earthflights logged. Here’s how I do it. As soon as I get up in the morning I turn on my dad’s radio and listen to the pilots conversations with the control tower. That way I soon hear whether the configuration will be north or south, depending on the winds, and other conditions. Later, when I’m in the street to get my ride to the Envera centre in Colemenar Viejo, I get a head start by “flying” down Bergantín Street to the bus, where other people on their way to the occupational centre are waiting for me. As their Captain, I greet them and give instructions for take-off over the bus microphone. After a while, I manage the landing in the same way. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years!.

As I write these words, I am at the Envera residence, and from my window I can see the control tower at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid Barajas Airport.

Aviation is my life, and this is because my father was an Maintenance technician before he took early retirement. He says that when I was little, I used to walk by myself from my house in Alameda de Osuna to the airport to look at the planes. I had reflectors on my trousers so people in cars could see me.

I also love photography and I always carry three cameras, one digital, another with film, and the smartphone camera. For more than 20 years, I’ve been making portraits of my neighbours in Alameda de Osuna, and the PhotoEspaña photography contest people have said I am one of a kind. That’s why they showed some of my pictures in a contest called “At the Airport's Edge”, held at the Gloria Fuertes Cultural Centre, and I was on the TV news, and in the newspapers and on the radio. Lots of people came to see the exhibition. They like to look at themselves, how they used to look, how they grew up, how they’ve grown old. Sometimes they get emotional when they see pictures of people who are no longer with us. The show made me very happy.

I am also a builder of buildings. I use wooden bricks that I make myself from sticks. I started on 19 March, 1983, when my grandfather Rafael died, 35 years ago, and since then, I have never stopped. Some have taken me years to build, but I don’t care. I have made a giant castle, a toilet facility for dogs, a tennis court, the Alameda de Osuna library, and a funeral home with a heliport.  I make them and I put in the stairs, the windows, the furniture, the electrical fittings, and everything. Some have lifts. Now I’m building a skyscraper and a street lamp like the one in the Moncloa plaza in Madrid. I think they will take me two years and three months to finish. We’ll see.

I was a striker on the Club Deportivo Ícaro Envera football team, but I hung up my boots when I reached 30 and my legs started feeling heavier. That’s life. You have to give up sports at 30. Then at 40, you’re impotent, and then you start losing your hair. It happens to everyone, because of hormones. But, I’m now at a good stage in my life because I work as a sports commentator on the “El Pichichi” programme on Radio Terrícola, where I have a great time talking about sports with the other reporters. Don’t miss my programme on radioterricola.com. Can you imagine that I even have fans in Germany?

Finally, I’d like to tell you about my facet as a musical composer with my song  “Happy Success”, which I have just recorded, though I wrote it on Tuesday, 20 August, 1996, for my fiancée Isabel. I hope you like it when you hear it.

Well, that’s what I can tell you about my life’s journey until now, when I am 47, to show how we can all go as far and as high as we can dream, flying over the obstacles and dribbling around the bad things that happen to us. My parents would never have guessed that their strange little boy would become the world’s only “earthflight” pilot, a famous photographer, musical composer, builder, and director of a radio programme. And a film actor, too. We might say that my life is like a movie."