Kerala Celebrates 75th Anniversary of Civil Aviation

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala is today celebrating its 75th anniversary of civil aviation service,started with a ‘royal touch’ on this day in 1935 when a plane of Tata Airlines flew in here with the patronage of late Chithira Tirunal Balarama Varma, prince of erstwhile Travancore.
The DH.83 Fox Moth aircraft, owned by patriarch of the Tata house, late J R D Tata, landed at the small airport at Chaakka on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, with two passengers and a bundle of mail from Mumbai (then Bombay).
Recalling the momentous occasion, the present head of Travancore royal family, Uthradam Trunal Marthada Varma, said it was the far-sightedness of the popular prince that made the air-service a reality at a time when even road and rail connectivity were in its early stages of development in this part of the country.
It was his realisation that air travel was going to be a vital mode of transport in the future and a symbol of progress that prompted the prince to make a personal request to Tata to bring Thiruvananthapuram on aviation map,he said.
With that Travancore down south became one of the few Indian princely states of the pre-independence period to have civil aviation service, historians say.
A large number of dignitaries including the then Travancore Diwan Muhammand Habibulla, C P Ramaswamy Iyer, the city Municipal council president Venkita Krishna Iyer and members of the royal family were present to greet the plane.
Common people, many of whom were seeing an aircraft for the first time, thronged the area to catch a glimpse of the ‘machine bird’ braving downpour.When it hovered over the airport and touched down,they cheered and applauded the event.
Pilot Nevill Vintcent and the two passengers, Jamshed Navoroji, a Tata company official, and Kanchi Dwarakadas, a commercial agent of Travancore, were garlanded by the dignitaries, according to the city's chronicles. The event was also covered by newspapers in both Bombay and Kerala, most of which carried an Associated Press report wired from Bombay.
29/10/10 Lekshmi Gopalakrishnan/Outlook India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Oct 2010