By Michael Soltys, Buenos Aires Herald Senior Editor

Aerolíneas Argentinas General Manager Mariano Recalde’s attempts to wriggle out of trouble over the virtual air taxi used earlier this month to take a select group to see Argentina’s decisive World Cup qualifier 1-0 away win against Uruguay only land him in even deeper trouble in the eyes of an expert audience (to whom the young trustee clearly does not belong). Recalde claims that far from being a free ride for various politicians and trade unionists on the right side of the government, the trip more than broke even — if 15 percent occupancy at cut rates sufficed to make a flight profitable, then the old joke about the best way to become a millionaire is to be a billionaire who acquires an airline would be hopelessly off target.

Furthermore, given that any old crate would do to fly across the Ri-ver Plate estuary, this case raises the question of why a brand-new 60-million-dollar 140-seat airliner was used to fly a fraction of that number to the Montevideo match — if such a fuel-efficient aircraft was so idle as to be available for several hours, this is surely a comment on either the wisdom of the purchase or the airline’s capacity to attain a competitive seat load factor. Recalde’s insistence that he paid 100 dollars for his own flight clashes with the worldwide practice of chief executive officers being able to fly free on their own airlines (even allowing for the fact that Recalde does not actually own Aerolíneas, even if he seems to behave as if he does, because the flag carrier of a state still in default continues being nominally the property of the Spanish Marsans company in order to allow it to fly around the world without undue consequences).

As such a youthful and inexperienced airline chief, Recalde clearly faces the burden of proof and this kind of junket is hardly the way to establish credibility in the eyes of international authorities. Nor is this an isolated occurrence, even within the context of Argentina’s World Cup bid — in order to lose against Ecuador in Quito, the soccer squad virtually hijacked a 250-seat jet, leaving dozens of Miami-bound passengers grounded. Perhaps in the light of the risks of using the presidential air fleet abroad given creditor claims, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has used Aerolíneas aircraft at will. In general, there is a need to understand that being a state airline does not mean subordination to any whim of anybody within government.