Aero India 2015 begins today

It is 112 years since Orville, the younger of the two Wright brothers, piloted an airplane on a North Carolina beach—the first ever powered flight. In India, we had to wait for a few more years for our first flight. The moment came in 1910.

As the 10th edition of Aero India kicks off later this month, we look at 10 items of interest from the field of aviation in India.

Davies or Pequet?

There are conflicting reports on who made the first flight. Some accounts attribute the effort to an Englishman, Edward Keith Davies. Others opine it was the Frenchman, Henri Pequet, who did it first, a day after Davies took to the skies.

Pequet, however, has a verifiable first to his credit. He piloted the world’s first ever airmail service. In February 1911, he was at the helm of an aircraft that flew from Allahabad to Naini. This event, with the Kumbh Mela as the backdrop, was a path breaker.

Back in the days planes were not made with the plethora of flying aids that we see today. It is said that Pequet had a rudimentary altimeter tied around his left leg to help him navigate!

Jehangir, the ‘Conqueror of the World’

Having the first man to fly across the English Channel as one’s neighbour would have been inspirational. Getting joyrides on his plane would have literally taken one to cloud nine. Louis Bleriot, the flying ace, lived next door to Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata. Through him JRD acquired a passion for the skies. JRD became the first Indian to obtain a pilot’s license. He founded India’s first commercial airline, Tata Airlines, with two second-hand de Havilland Puss Moths.

“On an exciting October dawn in 1932, a Puss Moth and I soared joyfully from Karachi with our first precious load of mail, on an inaugural flight to Bombay. As we hummed towards our destination at a ‘dazzling’ hundred miles an hour, I breathed a silent prayer for the success of our venture and for the safety of those who worked for it. We were a small team in those days. We shared successes and failures, the joys and headaches, as together we built up the enterprise which later was to blossom into Air-India and Air-India International.”

Propel Your Dreams

Walchand Hirachand Doshi was an industrialist who set up Premier Automobiles in 1941, rolling out the Dodge and Plymouth cars out of an India-based factory post-independence. A chance meeting with an aircraft manufacturer on one of his US trips, led him to establish Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL). It is one of the few state-owned ventures that is profit-making. HAL made Rs 3,578 crore of profit before tax in 2013-14.

Fall from Height

You would normally come across names such as Ambica, Darbhanga and Kalinga in historical tales. They are from a list of airline companies, nine in all, that were in operation at the time of independence. The only one to emerge successful was the Tata-operated company, which was later nationalised by the government and became Air India. The rest either went defunct or were absorbed into the nationalised carrier.

A Kushan emperor and a struggle for a modern state

Kanishka, famous for his military prowess, held an empire of great size. He ruled over lands extending from southern Uzbekistan to Mathura in the south east. Air India did well to name one of their first 747’s after the man.

Sadly, on a trip from Canada to India, in 1985, the plane was blown apart mid-air by Sikh extremists, a fall out of the internal strife in the state of Punjab. No one survived. The accident that killed 329 people was the third worst disaster in terms of human lives lost in aviation history.

Bite the Bullet

In the early 1890s, a British army officer and engineer, Captain Neville-Bertie Clay, developed a bullet that had its tip cut away. The bullet took its name dum-dum from the ammunition factory where it was made, which in turn gets its name from the Persian word damdama, meaning a battery of missiles. It is also a name familiar to flyers—Kolkata’s airport which came up in the vicinity of the factory.

In the Guinness Book

1990 was a landmark year for Indian aviation. It was the time when liberal policies took over and private airlines returned to the skies. The American-led aggression in West Asia boiled over, and many Indians were left stranded. Air India, in association with the Indian Air Force, is recognised by the Guinness Book for its efforts at evacuating the scores of people wanting to leave the region. More than one lakh people were brought back to the country over a two-month period, just before the Gulf War.

Low Cost, High Value

Remember those Re 1 tickets? The brainchild of Capt Gopinath, the pioneer whose dream it was to fly every Indian at least once in his/her lifetime, Air Deccan was a low-cost brand founded in 2003. With an endorsement from none other than R K Laxman, who lent his creation ‘the Common Man’ to the airline, it was good while it lasted.

Scenic Beauty

India has many lovely airfields. There is only one word to describe the only airport in Lakshadweep, Agatti —beautiful. The island on which it is located is a tiny 7 km long strip, of which the runway takes up 1.2 km. It was built in 1988 with an aim of promoting tourism to the region.

“We call him a Maharajah for want of a better description. But his blood isn’t blue. He may look like royalty, but he isn’t royal.” –Bobby Kooka, the man behind the concept.

One of the more distinct corporate symbols, the man with the striped turban and an oversized moustache is well-known to most Indians. He made his appearance way back in 1946, created by Umesh Rao, an artist with the ad agency J Walter Thompson. Do you like his new avatar, a slim, hipster look? We don’t.