The airline, which by 1948 registered itself as Air India International left for its first international maiden flight from Mumbai to London via Cairo and Geneva with a Lockheed Constellation aircraft.
The word international was dropped in the year 1962. In 1994 the airline was registered as Air India Ltd. Over the years, Air India has built a strong fleet of aircrafts and added new routes and services. Few of the recent routes of the flight are Delhi-Frankfurt-Los Angeles, Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham-Toronto, and Delhi-Dhaka-Kolkata-London.
Currently, the idea of merger of Air India and Indian airlines is in news. The merger will result in a mega entity with about 112 aircrafts and it would place it in top 10 in Asia.
Air India, India's national flag carrier has a wide base of worldwide passenger and cargo service. Air India in its original avtaar was Tata Airlines, and founded in 1932. J.R.D. Tata, an entrepreneur in its true sense played an important role in the development of the aviation industry in India.
He took off from Drigh Road Airport, Karachi, carrying a mail of Imperial Airways, in a tiny, light single-engined de Havilland Puss Moth on his flight to Mumbai via Ahmedabad. The aircraft was taken to Chennai by Nelly Vintcent, a former Royal Air Force pilot. By 1933 Tata Airlines flew over 160,000 miles, carried 155 passengers and 10.71 tonnes of mail. By August 1946, airlines emerged as a Public Limited Company under the new name of Air India.
Last Updated on 03 October 2011
