BackAs ‘Maharaja' returns home to Tatas, check out Air India's journey in photos
While Air India was founded as Tata Airlines in 1932 as the country’s first airline but nationalized in 1953
PremiumTalace Pvt Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, on Friday won the bid for acquiring Air India, marking the end of the process to privatise the national carrier with the government approving its disinvestment.
With this, the airline will return to its founder Tata group nearly seven decades after it was nationalized. While Air India was founded as Tata Airlines in 1932 as the country’s first airline but nationalized in 1953.
Welcoming Air India back into the fold of the Tata Group, Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata said: “On an emotional note, Air India, under the leadership of Mr JRD Tata had, at one time, gained the reputation of being one of the most prestigious airlines in the world. Tatas will have the opportunity of regaining the image and reputation it enjoyed in earlier years. Mr JRD Tata would have been overjoyed if he was in our midst today."
Alongside, he also posted a photo of JRD Tata with the crew of Air India.
However, while JRD undoubtedly gave wings to a nation with his love for aviation, the person who has been completely forgotten in the buzz of privatisation is the man who actually thought up the idea of Air India, and whom JRD himself referred to as “undoubtedly the founder of Indian air transport".
Nevill Vintcent was a veteran World War I pilot. In the 1920s, he worked in South-East Asia as a pilot and aviation evangelist. But he then moved to India, where he believed the scope for aviation was much greater.
He then conceived the idea of a domestic airmail service that would pick up the international mail in Karachi and deliver it to destinations in India within 24 hours.
Since he did not have the resources to set up such an airline himself, Vincent took his idea to a leading Parsi industrialist, Sir Homi Mehta.
Mehta, however, was not interested in the idea himself, but suggested that Vintcent talk to the Tatas instead.
While Sir Dorabji Tata, the then chairman of the Tata group, was not convinced by the idea first, JRD helped persuade him to support the venture. Thus, Tata Air Mail was born, with an investment of Rs2 lakh.
The airline bought two single-engined Puss Moth aircraft with an average speed of 50 miles (80km) an hour, carrying a consignment of mail (and, in case of need, one passenger who could sit on top of the mail bags).
The pilot would navigate by following the railway lines below and, in case of doubt, resorting to a slide-rule that he carried in his pocket. The chief pilot of this new airline was Vintcent.
Tata Air Mail’s maiden flight took off from Karachi on 15 October 1932: JRD Tata carried the mail from Karachi to Mumbai.
"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," JRD Tata later recalled. "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."
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