NEW DELHI: “Welcome Back, Air India,” said Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata minutes after the salt-to-steel conglomerate was chosen as the successful bidder for Air India, the airline which Bharat Ratna JRD Tata had founded in early 1930s but was nationalised in 1953.
Ratan Tata tweeted an old photograph of JRD getting down from an Air India aircraft and said, “On an emotional note, Air India, under the leadership of Mr JRD Tata had, at one time, gained the reputation of being one of the most prestigious airlines in the world. Tatas will have the opportunity of regaining the image and reputation it enjoyed in earlier years. Mr JRD Tata would have been overjoyed if he was in our midst today.”
Air India was very close to JRD as it was his first big adventure in business that was born of his childhood fascination for flying. In 1929, JRD became one of the first Indians to be granted a commercial pilot’s licence. A year later, a proposal landed at the Tata headquarters to start an airmail service that would connect Bombay, Ahmedabad and Karachi.
Thus in 1932 Tata Aviation Service, the forerunner to Tata Airlines and Air India, took to the skies. Tata himself flew its first single-engine de Havilland Puss Moth, carrying air mail from Karachi’s Drigh Road Aerodrome to Bombay’s Juhu aerodrome and later continuing to Madras.
Ratan Tata, an aviator himself, was the driving force in the group’s re-entry into the airline space with AirAsia India and Vistara. While it is surely one of the biggest and most emotional achievements for the Group to re-acquire Air India, it will be a Herculean task to turn around this debt-laden Maharaja.