Flying back in time. How Capt Ayodh Kapur and Tata Airlines took off

Captain Ayodh Kapur turns 95 this month. But age barely comes in the way of a fascinating conversation with him, embellished with memories of “flying with JRD (Tata) and for JRD” and the incident when his flight was hijacked in Beirut.

“I wanted to be a pilot,” says Kapur, who has seen aviation, and India, evolve, having taken part in the Quit India movement, even getting arrested. But where did all the action begin, for this nonagenarian? To trace that we need go go back in time.

On completing his intermediate in Science, Kapur joined Tata Airlines as an apprentice engineer in 1944. “How I came to be in Tata Airlines is another story,” says Kapur, who has lost sight in one eye because of a “faulty” cataract operation and has diminished vision in the other eye, caused by an age-related condition.

Tata Airlines started operations in 1932, when Tata Sons launched regular air mail services between Karachi and Madras (as Chennai was then known). In 1946, the airline changed its name to Air India and, two years later, launched a weekly Mumbai-London flight. In 1953, Parliament nationalised Tata Airlines into Air India and Indian Airlines.

Providence nudged the young Kapur, who was passionate about becoming a pilot, closer to Tata Airlines before it got nationalised — ironically through his reluctant father.

Kapur’s father, a divisional engineer at the Tata Hydroelectric Power Supply Company (at Lonavala), once helped the General Manager of Tata Airlines, Figgins, locate an aeroplane they’d lost in the Ghats (between Pune and Mumbai). Seeing Kapur’s father sad, Figgins asked him why he grieved for people he possibly did not know and the senior Kapur said, “I have a son who wants to die like this.” Since it was war time, pilots were getting shot down, says Kapur, putting his father’s remark in context.

Subsequently, the young Kapur was called by Figgins to Bombay House, the Tata headquarters. “Since there was no civil flying training then, he offered to make an engineer out of me, which I turned down,” he recounts.

Having studied at Mumbai’s Wilson college, Kapur eventually did return to meet Figgins, who contacted people at Juhu Airport who, in turn, put him through an exam — and thus began his ground engineering course.

Halfway through it, the war ended and his flying lessons began at the Bombay Flying Club alongside his engineering training. As he completed it, “I was the only person in the country to be a qualified engineer and a pilot flying the Dakota DC 3. I had 24,000 hours of flying in command,” he recalls, listing out aircraft he has flown, including Lockheed 749, Lockheed 1049, Boeing 707 and a Boeing 747.

The Lockheed planes joined the airline’s fleet in the 1950s and 1960s with a Lockheed Constellation L-749 A named Malabar Princess, being used on the first international flight linking Mumbai and London in 1948. Unlike jet aircraft now, which do the journey between Mumbai and London non-stop, in those days the aircraft stopped at Cairo and Geneva before reaching its destination.

Hijack drama and more

Of memorable experiences, there are many. “Like when my Jumbo jet Boeing 747 was hijacked out of Beirut,” says Capt Ayodh Kapur, his measured pace of speaking giving away little on the drama that unfolded. “There were 200 passengers on board, it was Christmas morning and the hijacker’s intent was to crash the aircraft into the Vatican, with the Pope in audience, to destroy the Christian Basilica and the thousands of devotees who had gathered there,” he reminisces. “As I was running out of fuel, I headed the aircraft at 4,000 feet over the Mediterranean and mounted the attack on the hijacker along with the co-pilot and flight engineer,” he says.

“We broke his head with an axe,” he says, adding clinically, “the axe was a Peaut which can cut through aluminium metal of which the aircraft is made. The aircraft was flown at low speed and over the sea “so that if I and my co-pilot were killed, it would crash into the Mediterranean sea and not over some crowded city,” he explains.

Then there was the experience of interacting with JRD Tata. “Earlier in my career, I flew JRD Tata to his factory in Jamshedpur,“ he says, adding quickly, “Actually it should be said, I flew with him as he did the flying. I flew for him too.”

ICAO recognition

With fortune favouring him — he was not shot down as feared by his father — Kapur retired from Air India (as a nationalised Tata Airlines was rechristened) and applied to the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation). They reverted saying he was the only pilot in the world with 24,000 hours in command with a valid flying and engineering licence, he says, proud of being appointed an ICAO aviation expert. He was posted in Kuwait, “to reorganise their civil aviation organisation in accordance with ICAO.” The ICAO is a specialised agency of the UN, established by States in 1944 to manage the administration and governance of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention). It works with the Convention’s 192 Member States and industry groups to reach consensus on international civil aviation Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) and policies in support of a safe, efficient, secure, economically sustainable and environmentally responsible civil aviation sector.

Coming to present-day issues, as his alma mater Air India stands poised for privatisation, Kapur says, “Given the rising prices of fuel, of aeroplane and spare parts, it is difficult to run the business.” There is no pride in one’s profession, he says, and that has led to the airline being in the situation it is in today. In the private sector there would be more controls, he feels.

Having seen the aviation landscape evolve over many decades, Captain Kapur says, “Things have not changed in aviation. I flew the big jets at sub-sonic speed,” and that has not quite changed. “Only military aircraft fly at supersonic speed. Civil aircraft have got bigger, but not faster,” sums up Kapur.

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