MUMBAI: JRD Tata’s historic flight carrying airmail from Karachi to Bombay on October 15, 1932, which marked the birth of commercial air transport in India was recreated on Friday. Given the political tensions with the neighbour though, the solo flight tracking the route that JRD Tata flew took off from Bhuj airport instead.
With this, the recreation of Tata’s historic flight was interwoven with another piece of Indian aviation history, one that took place on the IAF Bhuj airstrip during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war. Pakistani airstrikes had destroyed the airstrip with incessant bombings, leaving IAF fighter planes at Bhuj with no runway to take off from. Under the leadership of IAF squadron leader Vijay Karnik, the airstrip was reconstructed within 72 hours of the bombings, by about 300 villagers, largely women from the neighbouring Madhapar village.
