89th anniversary of first flight, group says filled with JRD Tata’s spirit of adventure
On an exciting morning of October 15, 1932, a young JRD Tata, clad in white trousers and short-sleeved shirt, armed with only a pair of goggles and a slide rule, took off punctually from Karachi in a Bombay-bound single-engine Puss Moth, carrying 25 kg of airmail and the weight of history on its wings.
Tata, who was just 28 then, landed on the Juhu mud flats on this very day nearly 90 years ago, scripting an aviation history for undivided India, that would also lay the foundation for what will later become the prestigious carrier ‘Air India’ in 1946. Today marks the 89th anniversary of that historic first commercial flight of India and a week before in a homecoming of sorts for Air India, the over 150-year-old Tata group brought back the debt-laden airline to its fold, with the salt-to-software conglomerate shelling out a whopping sum (Rs 18,000 crore).
