Alfredo Adame worked at Aeroméxico before becoming a familiar face on television, and he said the path to acting began with a dream that was always about flying. He entered the airline in February 1979 as a sobrecargo while still taking aviation classes, and later finished that stretch of training by getting his commercial pilot license in June 1982.
“Yo quería ser piloto aviador, nunca pensé en otra cosa,” Adame said of the ambition that guided him long before projects such as En el nombre del amor and Dos Hogares. He said he was flying commercial routes, not chasing a celebrity career, and that he took the job in the cabin to pay for school after his father sent him away for being rebellious. “Mi giro era la volada, yo soy piloto comercial y entré de sobrecargo para pagarme la carrera porque mi papá me mandó a la chingada porque andaba de rebelde,” he said. “Me lleva y entro a Aeroméxico en una semana como sobrecargo.”
He described the work as plain service on board: “Daba cafés, comidas y todo.” By then, he had already begun working on DC-9 flights while he kept studying, a route that was supposed to lead him from the cabin to the cockpit. Adame said the 1982 devaluation under José López Portillo stopped hiring and blocked that move. “Viene la devaluación del 82 con José López Portillo, se paran las contrataciones,” he said.
That economic break matters because it cut short a transition that looked possible only months earlier. After getting his license, he registered with the Asociación Sindical de Pilotos Aviadores to obtain the required carta, but vacancies stayed closed from 1983 to 1987, and the children of pilots had priority when openings did appear. With the airline path frozen, he requested unpaid leave from Aeroméxico and moved into private aviation.
From there, he worked as copilot of a 412 airplane for an agroindustrial company linked to the government, then flew a Learjet 25A at Empacadora Hidalgo, and later served as copilot for the Comisión Federal de Electricidad. He eventually shifted into acting and went on to more than 40 projects, but the little-known part of the story is that his career began not on a soundstage but in aviation, and it was the 1982 devaluation that forced the turn.
