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“My first important memories…were about cars and airplanes.”
Jeh used to play with the son of the legendary Louis Bleriot, the first man to fly across the English Channel, during his summer holidays at Hardelot, a beach resort situated near Boulogne, on the Channel coast of France.
Occasionally, the boys would see Bleriot’s chief pilot Adolph Pegoud land a plane on the beach. Jeh would watch the plane with his eyes glistening with excitement. To him, Adolph was a hero.
That small wave in the life of Jehangir ‘Jeh’ Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata would later trigger a series of events that would change the face of the Indian Aviation Industry forever.
JRD was 15 when he took his very first jaunt in a plane in France and in that moment, he decided that he will become a pilot. After nine long years, he became the first Indian to pass out with ‘No. 1’ endorsed on his aviator’s certificate, what a flying license was called then. Though, he wasn’t the first to register, that honour is etched in stone for Purushottam Meghji Kabali.
First steps taken, JRD wrote his next page of destiny with a dream. A dream to give India wings. A dream to build a palace in the sky. At 8AM on 15th October 1932, he set off on a flight from Karachi to Bombay to deliver 25kg of airmail and the weight of ambition on a secondhand de Havilland Puss Moth’s wings. When JRD landed in Juhu’s mud flats via Ahmedabad, India’s first air service was inaugurated.
The service was named Tata Airlines and would prove to be the foundation of the behemoth of a billion-dollar civil aviation industry in India. With the promise to be the quintessence of luxury and comfort in air travel, the name had the faith of the masses.
The unfolding years were to justify that faith. In 1946, Tata Airlines went public and became a joint stock company with majority control given to the government. It was called Air India.
Ninety years since that maiden flight by a man sorting just a pair of goggles and a slide rule, the control of Air India has been transferred back to the Tata Group. The name follows the legacy of JRD Tata, to whom aviation was like a first love, for which he gave so much of himself.
And to celebrate ninety years of the dream taking wings, KarmaPlay is hosting a special Aviation Quiz. Relive the legacy of knowledge that led us beyond the skies!
