After that inauspicious start, General Rodríguez assigned Fierro to deliver BC-2 when it rolled out at the end of March. Fierro knew Carranza had obtained permission to fly México-Excelsior from Mahoney-Ryan in San Diego nonstop to Mexico City, so he asked the governor to let him make his flight nonstop. Rodríguez, who would write in San Diego magazine’s August 1927 aviation issue that ‘Mexico represents a particularly suitable field for the operation of airlines, owing to the existing geographical obstacles…especially…in Baja California,’ jumped at the chance to demonstrate his company’s ability to build aircraft for duration flights. Fierro had two additional fuel tanks fitted in the front cockpit to augment the two 50-gallon wing tanks, providing a capacity of 350 gallons of gasoline plus 15 of oil, and flight-tested the plane to 13,000 feet under full load. It handled easily, with no tendency to turn difficult in the course of any test he gave it.

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Emilio Carranza took off on his nonstop Mexico-Washington flight with great fanfare 12 days after Fierro’s arrival from Mexicali. Restless, Fierro decided to take advantage of the prevailing patriotic mood and proposed flying BC-2 nonstop from Mexico City to Havana, Cuba–which no one had yet done–and making a goodwill tour of Central America on the return leg. Since the flight would advertise Mexico’s aircraft industry to the region, approval was granted.

Fierro planned to depart about July 1, but three consecutive weeks of rain softened Balbuena’s packed-earth runways and created huge mud puddles. Each time Fierro announced a new departure date, storms were forecast somewhere along his route. His colleagues counseled patience. But the public grew impatient. The flight–and Fierro himself–became the butt of newspaper cartoons and nightclub comedians.

For Fierro, it was ‘a period full of great hopes, but at the same time full of torments.’

The torment reached a peak when General José Luis Amezcua, director of military aviation, though not an aviator, told him the repeated delays were embarrassing the army. ‘Why don’t you leave now?’ he asked bluntly. ‘Right, general,’ Fierro replied, ‘just give me the order in writing and I’ll take off at once.’ Naturally, Fierro noted, the general refused to accept the responsibility of sending him to his death by written order.

While Fierro waited, Carranza crashed on his return flight to Mexico City. Inclement weather had forced him to postpone his departure three times. Meanwhile, public pressure–including telegrams to him and the Mexican government–motivated him to ‘get on with it.’ Then on July 12, 1928, hours after postponing his departure indefinitely because of storms forecast for the next several days, he took off from Mitchel Field, N.Y., and disappeared over New Jersey in a fierce storm. Mexican aviation historian Ruiz Romero maintains that a cablegram from Carranza’s superiors ordering him to depart immediately accounted for the sudden change of plan. The following day, a couple collecting wild cherries in the woods around Mount Holly came across the wreckage of México-Excelsior, with Carranza’s lifeless body lying nearby.

On August 10, the weather finally looked favorable over Fierro’s entire route. At 5 a.m. he flight-checked BC-2. While the engine warmed up, Fierro walked the entire runway, inspecting it for damage. Just after Fierro climbed into the cockpit and revved the engine, a car came roaring up bearing General Jesús Palomera López, who climbed up, embraced him and, stripping the watch off his own wrist, strapped it onto Fierro’s, saying he had no other memento to give him but wished him great success. Before Fierro could recover his composure, another car raced up. General Fernando Cue gave him an abrazo and a piece of paper, telling him, ‘When you feel alone in the immensity of space, read this poem to fortify your spirit in your solitude.’ It was Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If.’

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