The “Hispanic Airline Pilot from Reading” as many like to call him is a nickname that Juan Santillan wears with great pride. A dream that he has carried since he was 7 years old. But his story did not begin in Pennsylvania, but in a beautiful city full of culture and landscapes, which is Quito, Ecuador. That is where he was born and raised until he was 11 years old. Quito and its valley topography between the South American Andes means that planes can be seen coming and going all the time. It is there where he began his love for aviation, but more than anything it gave birth to a dream.
But fate had other plans…due to economic reasons, his family had to emigrate to the United States. The city of Reading, Pa was the destination since his father, due to his Spanish speaking and his profession as a clinical psychologist, was hired to help the problem of drug addiction in our city from Ecuador. That is where Juan had to start living like any immigrant without the language, without all his family, and with little information to be a pilot. The good thing was that fate itself helped him. His mother in one of her English classes gets to meet and know Rafael Núñez, a Dominican pilot who helped him take the first steps towards the search for a university and even taking Juan flying with him.
That’s when he started taking the Allentown pilot course in 2007. It took him three years to finish, but it landed him his first job as a flight instructor in 2010. There he got the experience he needed flying with regional airlines in 2014.Until now, the efforts of his parents and his wife have helped him fulfill his biggest dream of flying for American Airlines and one day flying through the Andes while in command.
His father Carlos Santilla always told him “In life the two most difficult things for a man are to find a partner or spouse, and a profession that you like.” Thanks to his father and mother, he was able to enter a civil aviation college that would help put him on the path to becoming a pilot.
Reading became his home, as a pilot he can live anywhere in the world, but he always ends up in the city of Reading, Pennsylvania, which saw him grow up, and which taught him that the bigger you are, the humbler you must be.
Rosa J Parra
Editor & Founder of Palo Magazine
